[iconoclast]

You've got a very good point there. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass describes how amazed he was at living standards in the North after he escaped from the plantation in the South where he was born and raised. Black laborers in New Bedford, Massachusetts -- who were not fully "free" in any sense of the word -- had a higher standard of living than most plantation owners in Maryland where he lived.

That's where all this started.

Now we're at a point where a man who owned 20 or 30 farms had a standard of living that was below that of a freed Negro in the north.

I have a suggestion for you .... in future, consider the source.

[Alberta's Child]

The source is me -- an idiot.

The "plantation" where he was born and raised was not the same one that he escaped from, so there's probably no inconsistency in what he said.

I would add, though, that the term "land rich, cash poor" still means something even today. I can show you a place not far from Calgary where an old couple still lives in an old home with no running water -- on a ranch that could probably fetch $10-$15 million dollars if it were sold tomorrow.