the plot thickens:
The social life of pioneer days had two characteristics absent from that of the present. The essential operations of the farm brought people together. Logging was perforce a common task. There was not capital in the hands of the pioneers to secure its performance by paid labor. The nature of the task did not permit of its being done single-handed. And so it was with many other operations as well.
The “bee”—the word does not arise from the social habits of the honey bee; word and institution alike came down from ancient Saxon days, when an alarm of danger from a foe brought all together for defence—the “bee” to which men had recourse for mutual aid in labor availed for social utility as well.
— Rural Life in Canada: Its Trend and Tasks. By John MacDougall (1913).
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