THE LAND OF THE FAIR DEAL
Lord, take us up to the heights, and show us the glory,
Show us a vision of Empire! Tell us its story!
Tell it out plain, for our eyes and our ears have grown holden;
We have forgotten that anything other than money is golden.
Grubbing away in the valley, somehow has darkened our eyes;
Watching the ground and the crops--we've forgotten the skies.
But Lord, if Thou wilt Thou canst take us today
To the Mount of Decision
And show us the land that we live in
With glorified Vision!
Every nation has its characteristic quality of mind; we recognize
Scotch thrift, English persistency and Irish quickwittedness wherever
we see it; we know something, too, of the emotional, vivacious nature
of the French, and the resourcefulness of the American; but what about
the Canadian--what will be our distinguishing feature in the years to
come? The cartoons are kind to us--thus far--and in representing
Canada, draw a sturdy young fellow, strong and well set, full of muscle
and vim, and we like to think that the representation is a good one,
for we are a young nation, coming into our vigor, and with our future
in our own hands. We have an area of one-third of the whole British
Empire, and one-fifth of that of Asia. Canada is as large as thirty
United Kingdoms and eighteen Germanys. Canada is almost as large as
Europe. It is bounded by three oceans and has thirteen thousand miles
of coast line, that is, half the circumference of the earth.
Canada's land area, exclusive of forest and swamp lands, is
1,401,000,000 acres; 440,000,000 acres of this is fit for cultivation,
but only 36,000,000 acres, or 2.6 per cent of the whole, is cultivated,
so it would seem that there are still a few acres left for anyone who
may happen to want it. We need not be afraid of crowding. We have a
great big blank book here with leather binding and gold edges, and now
our care should be that we write in it worthily. We have no precedents
to guide us, and that is a glorious thing, for precedents, like other
guides, are disposed to grow tyrannical, and refuse to let us do
anything on our own initiative. Life grows wearisome in the countries
where precedents and conventionalities rule, and nothing can happen
unless it has happened before. Here we do not worry about
precedents--we make our own!
Main Street, in Winnipeg, now one of the finest business streets in the
world, followed the trail made by the Red River carts, and, no doubt,
if the driver of the first cart knew that in his footsteps would follow
electric cars and asphalt paving, he would have driven straighter. But
he did not know, and we do not blame him for that. But we know, for in
our short day we have seen the prairies blossom into cities, and we
know that on the paths which we are marking out many feet will follow,
and the responsibility is laid on us to lay them broad and straight and
safe so that many feet may be saved from falling.
We are too young a nation yet to have any distinguishing characteristic
and, of course, it would not be exactly modest for us to attribute
virtues to ourselves, but there can be harm in saying what we would
like our character to be. Among the people of the world in the years
to come, we will ask no greater heritage for our country than to be
known as the land of the Fair Deal, where every race, color and creed
will be given exactly the same chance; where no person can "exert
influence" to bring about his personal ends; where no man or woman's
past can ever rise up to defeat them; where no crime goes unpunished;
where every debt is paid; where no prejudice is allowed to masquerade
as a reason; where honest toil will insure an honest living; where the
man who works receives the reward of his labor.
It would seem reasonable, too, that such a condition might be brought
about in a new country, and in a country as big as ours, where there is
room for everyone and to spare. Look out upon our rolling prairies,
carpeted with wild flowers, and clotted over with poplar groves, where
wild birds sing and chatter, and it does not seem too ideal or
visionary that these broad sunlit spaces may be the homes of countless
thousands of happy and contented people. The great wide uncultivated
prairie seems to open its welcoming arms to the land-hungry, homeless
dwellers of the cities, saying: "Come and try me. Forget the past, if
it makes you sad. Come to me, for I am the Land of the Second Chance.
I am the Land of Beginning Again. I will not ask who your ancestors
were. I want you--nothing matters now but just you and me, and we will
make good together." This is the invitation of the prairie to the
discouraged and weary ones of the older lands, whose dreams have
failed, whose plans have gone wrong, and who are ready to fall out of
the race. The blue skies and green slopes beckon to them to come out
and begin again. The prairie, with its peace and silence, calls to the
troubled nations of Middle Europe, whose people are caught in the cruel
tangle of war. When it is all over and the smoke has cleared away, and
they who are left look around at the blackened ruins and desolated
farms and the shallow graves of their beloved dead, they will come away
from the scenes of such bitter memories. Then it is that this far
country will make its appeal to them, and they will come to us in large
numbers, come with their sad hearts and their sad traditions. What
will we have for them? We have the fertility of soil; we have the
natural resources; we have coal; we have gas; we have wheat land and
pasture land and fruit land. Nature has done her share with a
prodigality that shames our little human narrowness. Now if we had men
to match our mountains, if we had men to match our plains, if our
thoughts were as clear as our sunlight, we would be able to stand up
high enough to see over the rim of things. In the light of what has
happened, our little grabbing ways, our insane desires to grow rich and
stop work, have some way lost their glamour. Belgium has set a pace
for us, has shown us a glimpse of heroic sacrifice which makes us feel
very humble and very small, and we have suddenly stumbled on the great
truth that it is not all of life to live, that is, draw your breath or
even draw your salary; that to get money and dress your family up like
Christmas trees, and own three cars, may not be adding a very heavy
contribution to human welfare; that houses and lands and stocks and
shares may be very poor things to tie up to after all.
An Englishman who visited Western Canada a few years ago, when
everybody had money, wrote letters to one of the London papers about
us. Commenting on our worldliness, he said: "The people of Western
Canada have only one idea of hell, and that is buying the wrong lots!"
But already there has come a change in the complexion of our mind. The
last eight months have taught us many things. We, too, have had our
share in the sacrifice, as the casualty lists in every paper show. We
have seen our brave lads go out from us in health and hope, amid music
and cheers, and already we know that some of them will not come back.
"Killed in action," "died of wounds," "missing," say the brief
despatches, which tell us that we have made our investment of blood.
The investment thus made has paid a dividend already, in an altered
thought, a chastened spirit, a recast of our table of values. "Without
the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin" always seemed a
harsh and terrible utterance, but we know now its truth; and already we
know the part of our sin of worldliness has been remitted, for we have
turned away from it. We acknowledge in sorrow that we have followed
strange gods, and worshiped at the worldly altar of wealth and
cleverness, and believed that these things were success in life. Now
we have had before our eyes the spectacle of clever men using their
cleverness to kill, maim and destroy innocent women and children; we
have seen the wealth of one nation poured out like water to bring
poverty and starvation to another nation, and so, through our tears, we
have learned the lesson that it is not wealth or cleverness or skill or
power which makes a nation or an individual great. It is goodness,
gentleness, kindliness, the sense of brotherhood, which alone maketh
rich and addeth no sorrow. When we are face to face with the elemental
things of life, death and sorrow and loss, the air grows very still and
clear, and we see things in bold outlines.
The Kaiser has done a few things for us. He has made us hate all forms
of tyranny and oppression and autocracy; he has made us hate all forms
of hypocrisy and deceit. There have been some forms of kaiserism
dwelling among us for many years, so veneered with respectability and
custom that some were deceived by them; but the lid is off now--the
veneer has cracked--the veil is torn, and we see things as they are.
When we find ourselves wondering at the German people for having
tolerated the military system for so long, paying taxes for its
maintenance and giving their sons to it, we suddenly remember that we
have paid taxes and given our children, too, to keep up the liquor
traffic, which has less reasons for its existence than the military
system of Germany. Any nation which sets out to give a fair deal to
everyone must divorce itself from the liquor traffic, which deals its
hardest blows on the non-combatants. Right here let us again thank the
Germans for bringing this so clearly to our notice. We despise the
army of the Kaiser for dropping bombs on defenseless people, and
shooting down women and children--we say it violates all laws of
civilized warfare. The liquor traffic has waged war on women and
children all down the centuries. Three thousand women were killed in
the United States in one year by their own husbands who were under the
influence of liquor. Non-combatants! Its attacks on the
non-combatants are not so spectacular in their methods as the tactics
pursued by the Kaiser's men, who line up the defenseless ones in the
public square and turn machine-guns on them. The methods of the liquor
traffic are not so direct or merciful. We shudder with horror as we
read of the terrible outrages committed by the brutal German soldiers.
We rage in our helpless fury that such things should be--and yet we
have known and read of just such happenings in our own country. The
newspapers, in telling of such happenings, usually have one short
illuminative sentence which explains all: "The man had been drinking."
The liquor traffic has outraged and insulted womanhood right here in
our own country in much the same manner as is alleged of the German
soldiers in France and Belgium! Another thing we have to thank the
Kaiser for is that we have something now whereby we can express what
women owe to the liquor traffic. We know now that women owe to the
liquor traffic the same sort of a debt that Belgium owes to Germany.
Women have never chosen the liquor business, have never been consulted
about it in any way, any more than Belgium was consulted. It has been
wished on them. They have had nothing to do with it, but to put up
with it, endure it, suffer its degradation, bear its losses, pay its
abominable price in tears and heartbreak. Apart from that they have
had nothing to do with it. If there is any pleasure in it--that has
belonged to men; if there has been any gain in it, men have had that,
too.
And yet there are people who tell us women must not invade the realm of
politics, where matters relating to the liquor traffic are dealt with.
Women have not been the invaders. The liquor traffic has invaded
woman's place in life. The shells have been dropped on unfortified
homes. There is no fair dealing in that.
A woman stooped over her stove in her own kitchen one winter evening,
making food for her eight-months-old baby, whom she held in her arms.
Her husband and her brother-in-law, with a bottle of whiskey, carried
on a lively dispute in another part of the kitchen. She did not enter
into the dispute, but went on with her work. Surely this woman was
protected; here was the sacred precincts of home, her husband, sworn to
protect her, her child in her arms--a beautiful domesticated Madonna
scene. But when the revolver was fired accidentally it blew off the
whole top of her protected head; and the mother and babe fell to the
floor! Who was the invader? and, tell me, would you call that a fair
deal?
The people who oppose democratic principles tell us that there is no
such thing as equality--that, if you made every person exactly equal
today, there would be inequality tomorrow. We know there is no such
thing as equality of achievement, but what we plead for is equality of
chance, equality of opportunity.
We know that absolute equality of opportunity is hardly possible, but
we can make it more nearly possible by the removal of all movable
handicaps from the human race. The liquor traffic, with its resultant
poverty, hits the child in the cradle, whose innocence and helplessness
makes its appeal all the stronger. The liquor traffic is a tangible,
definite thing that we can locate without difficulty. Many of the
causes of poverty and sin are illusive, indefinite qualities such as
bad management, carelessness, laziness, extravagance, ignorance and bad
judgment, which are exceedingly hard to remedy, but the liquor traffic
is one of the things we can speak of definitely, and in removing it we
are taking a step in the direction of giving everybody a fair start.
When the Boer War was on, the British War Office had to lower the
standard for the army because not enough men could be found to measure
up to the previous standard, and an investigation was made into the
causes which had led to the physical deterioration of the race. Ten
families whose parents were both drinkers were compared with ten
families whose parents were both abstainers, and it was found that the
drinking parents had out of their fifty-seven children only ten that
were normal, while the non-drinking parents, out of their sixty-one
children, had fifty-four normal children and only seven that were
abnormal in any way. They chose families in as nearly as possible the
same condition of life and the same scale of intelligence. It would
seem from this that no country which legalizes the liquor traffic is
giving a fair deal to its children!
Humanity is disposed to sit weakly down before anything that has been
with us for a long time, and say it is impossible to do away with it.
"We have always had liquor drinking," say some, "and we always will.
It is deeply rooted in our civilization and in our social customs, and
can never be outlawed entirely." Social customs may change. They have
changed. They will change when enough people want them to change.
There is nothing sacred about a social custom, anyway, that it should
be preserved when we have decided it is of no use to us. Social
customs make an interesting psychological study, even among the lower
animals, who show an almost human respect for the customs of their kind.
Have you ever seen lizards walk into a campfire? Up from the lake they
will come, attracted by the gleam of the fire. It looks so warm and
inviting, and, of course, there is a social custom among lizards to
walk right in, and so they do. The first one goes boldly in, gives a
start of surprise, and then shrivels, but the next one is a real good
sport, and won't desert a friend, so he walks in and shrivels, and the
next one is no piker, so walks in, too. Who would be a stiff? They
stop coming when there are no more lizards in the lake or the fire is
full. There does not seem to be much reason for their action, but, of
course, it is a social custom. You may have been disposed to despise
the humble lizard with his open countenance and foolish smile, but you
see there is something quite human and heroic about him, too, in his
respect for a social custom.
Moths have a social custom, too, which impels them to fly into the
flame of the candle, and bees will drown themselves in boiling syrup.
No matter how many of their friends and cousins they see lying dead in
the syrup, they will march boldly in, for they each feel that they are
strong enough to get out when they want to. Bees all believe that they
"can drink or leave it alone."
But moralists tell us that prohibition of any evil is not the right
method to pursue; far better to leave the evil and train mankind to
shun it. If the evil be removed entirely mankind will be forced to
abstain and therefore will not grow in strength. In other words, the
life of virtue will be made too easy. We would gently remind the
moralists who reason in this way that there will still be a few hundred
ways left, whereby a man may make shipwreck of his life. They must not
worry about that--there will still be plenty of opportunities to go
wrong!
The object of all laws should be to make the path of virtue as easy as
possible, to build fences in front of all precipices, to cover the
wells and put the poison out of reach. The theory of teaching children
to leave the poison alone sounds well, but most of us feel we haven't
any children to experiment on, and so we will lock the medicine-chest
and carry the key.
A great deal is said about personal liberty in connection with this
matter of the prohibition of the liquor traffic, though the old cry
that every man has a perfect right to do as he likes is not so popular
as it once was, for we have before us a perfect example of a man who is
exercising personal liberty to the full; we have one man who is a
living exponent of the right to do exactly as he likes, no matter who
is hurt by it. The perfect example of a man who believes in personal
liberty for himself is a man by the name of William Hohenzollern.
If there were only one man on the earth, he might have personal liberty
to do just as he liked, but the advent of the second man would end it.
Life is full of prohibitions to which we must submit for the good of
others. Our streets are full of prohibitory signs, every one of which
infringes on our so-called personal liberty: "Keep off the grass," "Go
slow," "No smoking," "Do not feed the animals," "Post no bills,"
"Kindly refrain from conversation."
Those who profess to understand the human heart in all its workings,
notably beer-drinking bishops and brewers, declare that a prohibitory
measure rouses opposition in mankind. When the law says, "Thou shalt
not," the individual replies, "I certainly shall!" This is rather an
unkind cut at the ten commandments, which were given by divine
authority, and which make a lavish use of "Thou shalt not!" These
brave souls, who feel such a desire to break every prohibition, must
have a hard time keeping out of jail. No doubt it is with difficulty
that they restrain themselves from climbing over the railway gates
which are closed when the train comes in and which block the street for
a few minutes several times a day.
The Archbishop of York, speaking at the York Convention recently,
declared against prohibition on the ground that when the prohibition
was removed there might be "real and regrettable intemperance"--the
inference being that any little drinking that is going on now is of an
imaginary and trifling nature--and yet the Chancellor of the Exchequer
declares that the liquor traffic is a worse enemy than the Germans, and
Earl Kitchener has added his testimony to the same sentiment.
The Dean of Canterbury declared that he did not believe in prohibition,
for he once tried total abstinence and he found it impaired his health.
Of course the Dean's health must be kept up whether the warships are
built or not. England may be suffering from loss of men, money and
efficiency, but why worry? The Dean's health is excellent! When we
pray for the erring, the careless and indifferent who never darken a
church door, let us not forget the selfish people who do darken the
church doors, and darken her altars as well!
But prohibition will not prohibit, say some. For that matter, neither
does any prohibitory law; the laws against stealing do not entirely
prevent stealing; notwithstanding the laws prohibiting murder as set
down in the Decalogue, and also in the statute books of our country,
there are murders committed. Prohibition will make liquor less
accessible. Men may get it still, but it will give them some trouble.
In the year 1909 the saloons in the United States were closed at the
rate of forty-one a day, and $412,000,000 was the sum that the drink
bill decreased. It would seem that prohibition had taken some effect.
But, in spite of the mass of evidence, there is still the argument
that, under prohibition, there will be much illicit selling of liquor.
It will be sold in livery stables and up back lanes, and be carried in
coal-oil cans, and labeled "gopher-poison." Even so, that will not
make it any more deadly in its effects; the effect of liquor-drinking
is much the same whether it is drunk in "the gilded saloon," where
everything is exceedingly legal and regular, or up the back lane,
absolutely without authority. Both are bad!
Under prohibition, a drunken man is a marked man--he is branded at once
as a law-breaker, and the attitude of the public is that of
indignation. Under license, a drunken man is part of the system--and
passes without comment. For this reason a small amount of drunkenness
in a prohibition territory is so noticeable that many people are
deceived into believing that there is more drunkenness under
prohibition than under license. Prohibition does not produce
drunkenness, but it reveals it, underlines it. Drunkenness in
prohibition territory is like a black mark on a white page, a dirty
spot on a clean dress; the same spot on a dirty dress would not be
noticed.
There was a licensed house in one of the small prairie towns, which
complied with all the regulations; it had the required number of
bedrooms; its windows were unscreened; the license fee was paid; the
bartender was a total abstainer, and a member of the union; also said
to be a man of good moral character; the proprietor regularly gave
twenty-five dollars a year to the Children's Aid, and put up a cup to
be competed for by the district hockey clubs. Nothing could be more
regular or respectable, and yet, when men drank the liquor there it had
appalling results. There was one Irishman who came frequently to the
bar and drank like a gentleman, treating every person and never looking
for change from his dollar bill. One Christmas Eve, the drinking went
on all night and well into Christmas Day. Then the Irishman, who was
the life of the party, went home, remembering what day it was. It all
came out in the evidence that he had taken home with him presents for
his wife and children, so that his intention toward them was the
kindest. His wife's intention was kind, too. She waited dinner for
him, and the parcels she had prepared for Christmas presents were
beside the plates on the table. For him she had knitted a pair of gray
stockings with green rings around them. They were also shown as
evidence at the inquest!
It is often claimed that prohibition will produce a lot of sneaking
drunkards, but, of course, this man had done his drinking under
license, and was of the open and above-board type of drinker. There
was nothing underhand or sneaking about him. He drank openly, and when
he went home, and his wife asked him why he had stayed away so long, he
killed her--not in any underhand or sneaking way. Not at all. Right
in the presence of the four little children who had been watching for
him all morning at the window, he killed her. When he came to himself,
he remembered nothing about it, he said, and those who knew him
believed him. A blind pig could not have done much worse for that
family! Now, could it?
Years after, when the eldest girl had grown to be a woman, she took
sick with typhoid fever and the doctor told her she would die, and she
turned her face to the wall and said: "I am glad." A friend who stood
beside her bed spoke of heaven and the blessed rest that there remains,
and the joy of the life everlasting. The girl roused herself and said,
bitterly: "I ask only one thing of heaven and that is, that I may
forget the look in my mother's face when she saw he intended to kill
her. I do not want to live again. I only want to forget!" The
respectability of the house and the legality of the sale did not seem
to be any help to her.
But there are people who cry out against prohibition that you cannot
make men moral, or sober, by law. But that is exactly what you can do.
The greatest value a law has is its moral value. It is the silent
pressure of the law on public opinion which gives it its greatest
value. The punishment for the infringement of the law is not its only
way of impressing itself on the people. It is the moral impact of a
law that changes public sentiment, and to say that you cannot make men
sober by law is as foolish as to say you cannot keep cattle from
destroying the wheat by building a fence between them and it, or to
claim you cannot make a crooked twig grow straight by tying it
straight. Humanity can do anything it wants to do. There is no limit
to human achievement. Whoever declares that things cannot be done
which are for the betterment of the race, insults the Creator of us
all, who is not willing that any should perish, but that all should
live and live abundantly.