This memoir recounts a British writer's travels and labor across Canada, the American West and Mexico while seeking economic opportunity. It blends rural and urban episodes—college study and prairie land speculation, ranch life and rodeo tasks, seasonal work in Chicago, prospecting and asphalt mining in the west and Texas, and municipal street contracts in Los Angeles—alongside encounters with strikes, political canvassing, violence, and everyday hardship. Practical observations on emigration, employment, local customs, and business practices run through anecdotes of manual labor, frontier justice, and the moral and financial risks faced by hopeful migrants.