We are the unsatisfied, variable children of an unsettled age. Always casting aside the tried for the new (trading) the real happiness that we have for the speculative happiness we see ahead.  This is what I thought the other day after talking to an aged retired carriage-maker and his wife of Tillsonburg.  Both were in their eighties -- eighty-three and eighty-four respectively.  Both were alive to the advantages of the rushing mechanically-easy age in which they were spending the close of their lives. But both were infinitely more pleased - their faces lit with actual delight - as they spoke of the slow toil and individual invention demanded by the spinning, wagon-making days of their pioneerdom.   Their golden wedding is at hand.  "We were always working when we were young." Said Mrs. Isaac Hogarth. "Even my play was work. But what fun we had out of it! When we got a chance to sit down, my sister and I would measure off our 'stent' of yarn. Then gaily would flash our needles as we began a knitting race."  I wonder if, sixty-five years from now, the eyes of our athletic, tennis-playing flapper of the present will twinkle so delightedly as did those of this old lady, when speaking of her thrifty childhood's pleasures.

Without doubt, this age of sport and spending-money through which our young people are flitting, has lost much of that, most satisfying sport of all - the sport of saving industry.  Mr. Hogarth, on his part, must have found a large portion of his boyhood pastime in tools. Out of which eventually resulted his profession.  All through Dereham, Norwich and Northern East Elgin, the name of Isaac Hogarth, within the memory of most living men, has been sysonomous (sp) with first-class conscientious blacksmithing.

Art in a Farm Wagon
Now, a thoroughly apprenticed accredited blacksmith does not mean, as most people suppose, a mere shoer of horses.  His tools include a hammer and anvil. But also the plane and saw-the multitudinous array of wood worker's equipment.  And the special art of his calling is or was in the good old days, not so much the fitting of a horse's shoe as the fashioning of beautiful carriages to go behind the well shod high stepper or strong, imperishable wagons with which draft horses draw loads.  It was as this many sided type of blacksmith that Mr. Hogarth became so well known.

It appears there is much unsuspected art in a common farm wagon. It was because of their peculiarly easy "draft" that the Hogarth wagons became noted about Tillsonburg. People told neat little stories about them. As:  Two men in a barn were loading hay. They had pitched on half a ton, when needing to run the wagon to one side, both seized hold of the tongue, and behold, the heavy vehicle with its burden, moved away under their hands with tolerable ease.  But the next wagon, similarly loaded, they found themselves unable to budge.  The first one, of course, had been a Hogarth's.  Then there were the two farmers drawing loads on a muddy highway. "I don't know how you do it," called one to the other as they halted for a rest.  "My team is a third better than yours but here they're dripping wet, pulling for all that's in them. While yours are walking right along.  "Go and get a wagon where I got mine. You'll draw easy too." called the other.  The man did.  He went to Isaac Hogarth's.

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to enlighten me on the causes why wagons draw "light" or "heavy." He talked graphically about axles, tapered "arms" the "dish of wheels" and those forces of the universe which pull this way and that on running gear until one felt one's respect for the humblest farm tool rising like a barometer.  And finally he gave his secret for overcoming weight in a pull.  "Had he learned the trick of the master-mechanic who taught him his trade? Or evolved it himself?"  "Oh, I had to work that out by experimental experience." Replied Mr. Hogarth.  "It is necessity that mothers invention.  When you get in a difficulty you have to make a way out." And he told of a small metal contraption to keep bolts from slipping which he once had to invent overnight to meet a morning's problem. And which had been one of his handiest tools ever afterward.

Standardizing Human Nature
In the old days, when teams and wagons hauled spars and timber from Ingersoll to Port Burwell, a cavalcade of Hogarths' wagons used to ply the "Plank" Road.  They were their maker's delight.  He no longer possessed them materially of course. But he did mentally.  Inventorily they were the children of his art and he rejoiced in them accordingly.  Like the old masters did their operas, their mullioned windows or their wonderful majolicas.

With all our so-called advantageous system of manufacture one wonders sometimes whether we have most gained or lost in the real essentials of life?  The modern factory will put out a thousand wagons to Mr. Hogarth's one, but is it as good as soul-satisfying a wagon? The laborer working for the factory has shorter hours and higher pay.  But is he as happy a man?  Economy in modern industry is based on a principle of standardization.  But does not the same principle attempt to standardize a man's soul as well?  Truly it gives him his bathtub, his auto, hour of gaiety. But it also takes away in his opportunity to develop his individuality in the urge that compels him to expand his native ability.  Who knows but this lack is one cause of our labor unrest?

Of English parentage, Mr. Hogarth was born in the township of Darlington, forty miles east of Toronto. It was a fine rolling country there. Although they were some six miles in from the Lake they could watch the ships sailing by.  Like many pioneers the family became victims of the "western" fever.  Part of the "west" then was Western Ontario - a place of cheap and plentiful land, where families might expand.  The Hogarths came "west" to Norwich and eventually settled at Culloden.  Young Isaac learned his trade at Mount Elgin and marrying a Miss Staple of Culloden set up his own establishment. But the wife did not survive many years and Mr. Hogarth remarried, this time a Miss Caverhill of Norwich.  After a year at Aylmer, they moved to Tillsonburg where they have spent nearly half a century.  Four children of the latter marriage are living.  Mrs Wright, of Windsor, Ross and George, in Denver, and Miss Pauline at home.

The family have always been very prominently connected with the life of the Methodist church. Mr. Hogarth being well known throughout the surrounding country as a local preacher before the day when the Wesleyan idea of small rural churches gave way to centralization in villages.

Starting in life amid such primitive conditions that he well recalls a time when grain standing in the field in the morning was harvested, threshed, milled, and became converted into biscuits for an evening meal, Mr. Hogarth says the greatest change that he has witnessed brought in by modern life to him is the radio. He regards the radio as an object --illegible words to end of line-- "nothing is new under the sun" The thought that the conversation and tumult of the world has, for ages, remained a secret tied up in the air has profoundly impressed him.

Mrs. Hogarth, as a Caverhill, was born in New Brunswick.  When four years old her family moved up to Norwich. Beginning life by the blazing logs of a fireplace, passing her later evening by a natural gas heater, with electric lights, the old lady says it puzzles her to know what has become of those hour daily that our numerous labor saving devices promised to and really must save us.  "We used to grow, shear, spin, weave, dye and make up the wool that comprised our garments" she says.  "We cured our own meat, drove slow ox teams and for all I see visited as much and dispensed as much hospitality then as we do now.  Our modern machinery saves hour upon hour for us.  But where are they?  Most women are still as busy as nailors.  I have never been able to satisfactorily explain this matter to myself."