text: That is a good question. It was not the well off. In the Scottish highlands, for example, people were living in stone houses with dirt floors and working mostly as tenant farmers. And then many were getting kicked off the land as owners switched to sheep farming. It was a very rough life for many. It was mostly the more industrious and ambitious of these people who managed to scrape together the fare to come.  This is partly why Canada did so well, it was stocked by ambitious and industrious people to a large extent.