A MAJORITY WILL BE SAVED
One hates to have anything to do with the promulgation of a new law,
especially when temperamentally in accord with the poet Carman who
"Could always be at home
Just beyond the reach of rule."
But the new law is already in existence, and as all I propose to do is
modestly to discover its operations, I feel less compunction in the
matter. But before making the announcement it is necessary to clear the
ground by calling attention to another law that is apparently producing
the chaotic conditions that are causing so much alarm at the present
time. Then the new law may be offered as a balm that is to cure existing
evils. Having reassured the mind of the reader we may now proceed.
Somewhere in his voluminous writings Karl Marx makes the arresting
statement that "all capitalistic organizations carry within themselves
the elements of their own destruction." (Solomon said long before Marx,
"The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.") It might be demonstrated
that the destroying element is "greed" for wealth and power, but it is
enough to call attention to the fact that the work of destruction is at
present in progress. Every morning our newspapers are calling attention
to the fact that political parties are destroying themselves through
lust for power and because they are dominated by the forces of organized
Greed.
Capital is at present in a parlous condition because it is suspected of
greedy profiteering and the plain people are in the mood to bring it to
book.
Labor, that was enabled to organize because of the work done by Capital
in centralizing industry for the purpose of increasing profits, is in
danger of destroying itself by its exactions, by general strikes, and
by making labor conditions in the cities so remunerative and attractive
that no one wants to stay on the farms to do the necessary but heavy and
mussy work of food production.
There are even those who point out that the churches are destroying
their usefulness by a rage for over-organization and financial
stability, but that is a question that no cautious man would care to
review.
Now the cities, those organized centres of humanity, appear to be
passionately intent on committing suicide. In this they are receiving
material aid from governments, but it seems useless for any one to offer
a protest. When a delegation of farmers recently waited on Governor
Smith, of New York, to protest against the adoption of daylight saving
legislation, he rebuked them severely for their class selfishness. No
one seems to realize that daylight saving is simply a gesture in the
progress of city suicide. The few laborers to be found on the farms
naturally want to take advantage of the daylight saving law, with the
result that they are idle in the morning hours when the dew makes
impracticable the cultivation of root crops, corn, etc., and the
gathering of hay and sheaves. And besides being idle at the expense of
the farmers in the morning, they are idle for their own enjoyment in the
late afternoon and evening when field work can be attended to most
satisfactorily. Besides, the farmer is obliged to do his own milking and
chores while his highly paid hired man goes to town to enjoy the movies.
The result is that farmers are forced to limit their enterprises to the
amount of work that can be done by themselves and their families. In
many cases it would not pay them to employ a hired man. Indeed, cases
have come under my personal observation where farmers found it more
practicable to sell their farms and hire out with farmers who thought
they could contend with the new adverse conditions. And presently these
farmers who hired out followed the general trend of the rural population
and moved to the cities where they could have shorter hours and more
attractive conditions.
The "New York Sun and Herald" had an editorial recently in which it
spoke of the farmers going on strike. They are not going on strike, but
they are limiting productions to what they can do themselves--and the
result is the same. They are not doing this from desire, but through the
compulsion of circumstances.
Daylight saving, however, is only one of the many methods employed to
uproot humanity from the soil and enable the cities to commit suicide by
starvation.
Critics of the tariff have shown how the protection of manufactures
causes higher wages to prevail in the cities and withdraws men from
the productions of food. Agricultural education and the farmers'
movement have tended to centre the attention of the farmer on
money-making--rather than on home-building--and that is disastrous.
The farmer is keeping books, and as home-making cannot be expressed
either by single entry or double entry, he applies the dollar test to
everything with the result that in many places food crops are being
discarded for profitable cash crops, such as tobacco, sugar-beets,
etc.
The farmer is finding out what crops do not pay in dollars and is
discarding them--thereby increasing the various shortages. In order to
make him efficient in this destructive work, governments are imposing
income taxes and compelling the farmer to keep books. And no one is
calling attention to the basic fact that farming is above all a
home-making business and that money-making is secondary. Our pioneer
fathers raised all crops for their own use, with the result that they
had plenty and a surplus to feed the cities of those days.
The whole tendency of the time is to make the country more like the
cities--to give the farm city advantages. Cities are not content with
increasing their wealth and population. They promote radial railways and
manufacture automobiles to bring the farmers to the cities. They
educate them to patronize the movies and follow the fashions. Every day
the farms are becoming more like the cities. Farm children are given
city educations and they develop city tastes. The world is mad on the
building of cities. Some months ago an enthusiast sitting in the chair
beside me in the lobby of a Toronto hotel showed me how the development
of hydro-electric power on the Niagara River and the St. Lawrence would
finally transform New York State and the Province of Ontario into one
vast city from Manhattan to Port Arthur. And he added triumphantly:
"Then we could dictate to the world."
It sounded very progressive and alluring, but as I was waiting for the
dining-room to open, the promptings of appetite led me to wonder how
this great city of the future is to be fed.
The simple fact is that the country is getting so like the cities that
it is stopping the production of food, and unless the tide turns the
cities and the country will commit suicide together. But as indicated
in a previous chapter there is a door of hope. Our fathers laid the
foundations of a country civilization, richer and more satisfying than
any city civilization the world has known. If we turn in time and build
on that foundation the predictions of all the prophets will be confuted.
Now the time has come to announce the new law, the law of reversal which
has been touched upon in a previous chapter. It has already begun to
operate and all that remains is for the majority to fall in line with
it.
And the majority will do this.
In the great crises of the past it was predicted that "a remnant will be
saved."
The time has come to announce the reversal of this law and proclaim that
"a majority will be saved."
If you stop to weigh recent events, you will find that there is a sound
reason for this proclamation. Since the signing of the armistice there
have been strikes, both authorized and "outlaw," that interfered with
the rights of the majority of the people. And the people did not endure
them tamely. In Winnipeg, Seattle, New Jersey, and elsewhere the people
undertook to do the work that was being stopped by the strikers. In
almost all these cases the volunteer workers went too far in their
manifestations--forgot the need of adhering to legal methods. But they
made it quite clear that the big, quaking, foolish majority is no longer
in the mood to put up with the tyranny of noisy minorities. All strikes
and disturbances in the transaction of business cause more trouble and
suffering to the ordinary citizens than to those who are directly
involved. And experience has shown that the ordinary people of Canada
and the United States are not ordinary. On the battlefields of Europe
the privates on many occasions showed themselves as resourceful as their
officers and as ready to cope with difficult problems. Those whose
affairs are being interfered with by men who depart from constitutional
methods to redress their grievances are not an ignorant and oppressed
mob, but men who have been accustomed all their lives to freedom and
legal methods. They are not lacking in courage or initiative, and are
entirely capable of calling "bluffs" of all kinds. It so happens that
the "bluff" of some irresponsible agitators is the first that has been
forced on their attention, and their response is the most cheering news
we have had for many a day. It may mean the beginning of a better era.
Most of the wrongs from which struggling humanity suffers are due to
"bluffs"--some of them very respectable and imposing--and if the people
start to call them we shall have a notable house-cleaning. Moreover, all
these can be called without departing from the constitutional methods
established by our fathers, and which our sons so heroically defended.
All this indicates that after the cities, Big Business, Labor, and even
the Farmers' Movement have succumbed to the present passion for suicide,
the majority will be saved.
In the days when salvation was only for the remnant, that remnant
represented the minority that stood for the rights of humanity. The
majority stood for autocratic or theocratic power and destroyed itself
by its arrogance and greed.
The birth of Democracy changed all this. The majority now stands for the
rights of man--of the plain citizen. Because there was so much to learn
before Democracy could realize its possibilities we have been tyrannized
over by minorities--bosses, bureaucracies, trusts, labor organizations,
and other forms of absolutism. But the great mass of the people stand
for individual rights and individual initiative.
The average citizen of the new world
"Stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
He draws his furrer es straight es he can,
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes."
All of them may not be drawing furrows; some of them may be engaged in
non-essential occupations; but their instinct is the same. If they are
left alone they will leave other people alone. And there is evidence
that if they are not left alone something is going to happen. Le Bon
points out that the inert mass of the population represents the soul of
a nation. If this is true the outlook is all that can be wished. In the
new world there is an instinct for order that expresses itself sometimes
without waiting for the processes of law. This impatience is
regrettable, but the attitude is admirable. It indicates that the day of
the remnant is passed and that the majority is to come to its own. The
future may have trouble in store for the profiteers, agitators,
bureaucrats, and others who are wailing that the world is going to the
devil, but the great law of reversal is in operation and
"A majority will be saved."