Some Impressions of Empire Settlement

Mr. President and Gentlemen,--I feel very much honoured with the invitation which you have extended to me, and while I accepted it with extreme pleasure I wish at this time to express verbally to the members and officers of this Club my grateful thanks for their hospitality and their courtesy. I am pleased to see amongst those present some of my very oldest friends, some to whom I owe a great debt, including and especially two of my former school teachers.

I do not suppose there was ever a time in the history of our Empire when cohesive interest and cooperated effort were so essential or so vital to the good of this Empire. I am pleased to think that all the members of this Club,- and those associated in

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Mr. Noxon is a well-known citizen of Toronto who retired after a successful business career and spent some years in Europe. During the war he had charge of the Toronto and York Patriotic Fund. Later, he went to London as a member of the Canada Trade Mission, and on the retirement of Mr. Lloyd Harris he was put in charge. Since his appointment as Agent-General he has been most active in matters connected with trade and immigration.

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what you are doing towards strengthening and tightening the bonds which draw this Empire closer together, are so thoroughly united. I also feel a due sense of honour in being privileged to try and carry on the affairs of this province in the great centre of the Empire, and I wish to acknowledge to the Government my conscious appreciation and sense of duty, and to say that I do respect the honour and responsibility which has been reposed in me. I can only assure you that my abilities and experience, whatever they are, will be utilized in a manner which I hope and trust will meet the approbation of the people of this province. I am very pleased to tell you that the duties of my office carry many pleasures; for I think all service should be a pleasure. The key-note of my office is "Service," and when a request comes which is foreign to our duty we give the very best advice we can as to the nearest and easiest and most likely way of meeting the requirement. Where the request is pertinent to our affairs it is taken hold of in a business-like way and promptly and effectively dealt with, so that everyone who comes to us goes away with a certain degree of service. We, in return, receive experience; and I am sure that all of us who have lived long enough agree that progressive experience is the best forerunner of good judgment. It is also a lighthouse in the midst of confusion and of troublesome affairs.

Then there is another pleasure for me, and that is the pleasure of returning here, and by contact with the people and the affairs of this province recharge my batteries with information, and with appreciation of the wonderful resources and of the greatness and goodness of our own people. A country is not known altogether by its resources; it is known by the kind of people it has. I am therefore delighted to come back and meet the many friends and business men and the community in general, in order that I may be better able to discharge the duties devolving upon me. I can assure you that I am returning more than charged, not only with enthusiasm, but with admiration and pride at the wonderful resources of this country, and I look forward with courage and confidence to our future.

Sometimes I am asked over there how I like the country, and I tell them that I like the country splendidly, and that I like the people equally well. I like the way they run their steam trains, the way they manage their street traffic, the way they operate their bus routes and conduct their underground. I like the traditions and the history associated with those crooked streets and peculiar buildings; and sometimes I like the weather but I never like the way they heat their houses. (Laughter) They have two systems of heating their houses. One is called a central system; the other, for lack of a better term, I have called the ancient and modern, because it is just as popular today as it was 2,000 years ago, and just as inefficient. (Laughter) Nevertheless, it is a characteristic of their country, and cannot be dispensed with; it is the basis of their good humour and cheerfulness. I admit that I have had to combine the two systems, one for comfort, and one for my happiness and cheerfulness.

I also tell them that I have inherited a natural love of the Scot from my mother, and then I am trying, by contact, to acquire, and I was rapidly acquiring a similar regard for my brother Englishman; and after all, when I say contact, that is just tact with a little prefix.

I tell them that three things have struck me in connection with my association with them, and that since we have become better acquainted there are three peculiar bonds which have attached me to them. The first is the natural bond of inherited instinct; the second is the bond of sentiment which I acquire and appreciate more as I grow older and know more about them; the third is a peculiar bond, the bond of charm; and under that there are many things. One that struck me first is their universal good-humour. There is no race in the world who have themselves under such control, under trying conditions, as the British race; they are universally good-humoured. (Applause) They have discovered that to lose your temper and your head at a critical time is folly, and it is very unbecoming in things that do not require it, and that nothing is gained by it. Another characteristic is their national modesty. There is no nation in the world that has done onetenth of what Great Britain has done for the world that does not think it has done ten times more. Britain is naturally a nation of modesty; I will not say so much, perhaps, individually. A third feature is the peculiar type, which I have tried to discover, and their manner of speaking and expressing the English language. It used to be said that the French was the only language that was expressive, but I have found that the English language is the most expressive. I will give you an illustration. On the road from London to Richmond, which I had to travel every day for a year, I found a butcher-shop, on the corner of which was this sign: "Family butcher," and in order to induce business they had per underneath--"Home-killed." (Laughter) On going into the shop I found that a woman kept it, and my courage failed me as I was about to enquire the meaning of the sign, so I asked, "Could you give me a nice leg of lamb?" In the straightest of English, and with the best intention, she answered, "I am sorry, Sir; I am not killing myself today, but I will try and get you one off my brother." (Great laughter) That is English. But this is more or less aside from the subject of our general talk.

I have tried to divide our discussion or chat into three parts: the moral attitude, the material attitude, and the geographical attitude.

We must remember that true patriotism in the Empire is really a duty to our neighbour. Not only locally, but from a material standpoint it must not make exception to race or colour. There are three elements in life which affect human affairs: race, religion and politics. Either of the former two is greater than the third, and it therefore behooves us to realize that we should pay attention to the race; that we should have a greater pride in our stock; that we should try and make a better heredity; that we should realize that intelligence and merit are the only safe authority for direction and administration and government. We should feel an interest in seeing that the traditions of our race are not spoiled; and if the principles which underlie the British forms of civilization were worth the recent sacrifice for their preservation, surely we have a duty to see that they are passed on to future generations without any dilution, or if altered, only for the better.

All this brings us to a point as to how far it is safe for us to trust, to people of other races, British ideals and the fundamentals which underlie British life and society. It is not necessary for me to remind you that the British race has always been a constructive race; that it has done more for the world than any other race; that it pre-eminently has made the world better; therefore I feel that there is no race or colour which has any advantage over us, and there is no reason to think that they will administer, under authority, our ideals as well as we do ourselves. Now, these principles and ideals which underlie British life, if worthy, should be passed on .to future generations in order that the recent sacrifice which was made for their preservation may benefit those who follow. Our only hope lies in the moulding of the character of the young, and the responsibility for this transfer of ideals to future generations rests with the press, with the teacher, with the preacher, with the thinker, with ail in authority and I do not except the parents. Parental authority has declined; there is too great and too general a tendency to lean upon the state; a very unhealthy national circumstance, in my judgment.

There is another direction in which our moral obligation is equally great; and that is to the present, to both young and old, and to the future. I think it was never designed that every one should be born with the same degree of intelligence, nor educated to, the same standard of worthiness, therefore we have a certain average degree of quality in our administration, or in the authority to administer. The standard of the governments in ideals and quality is no greater than the average in the voters. I would therefore suggest that, while we would welcome to our country all who are qualified under the immigration regulations, the vote should go only to those who will receive instruction, and qualify by examination. (Applause) By the adoption of some such course you immediately eliminate all the foreign-women vote; secondly, you eliminate all the foreign element which you do not really want to vote. On the other hand, you only give the vote to those who are willing to study and be instructed in the ideals and principles which underlie British Government; and to those we are quite willing to give it, after a period of instruction and the passing of a reasonable examination. It is not fair to me, as a citizen of this country, or to any other man who has raised a family, to bring his boy up to twenty-one years of age before he can vote, and then have all the ideals which he has had inculcated into him destroyed and negatived by one foreign vote. (Applause) I, for one, will do everything I can to see that the vote goes only to those who are properly instructed. If you want an example of what the lack of that is, turn to your neighbours to the south. They had a characteristically national government in the United States up until about 1850; since that time they have opened the gates of immigration, and they are today paying the price, which I consider is too great a price to impose on future generations of Canada. (Hear, hear, and applause)

Now for the material attitude. Too often we work on the material side at the expense of the moral; but let me tell you that there is no real material success that does not go hand in hand with moral cultivation. (Hear, hear) I have often wondered how much the markets of Great Britain owe to the confidence which other nations have had in the honour of Britishers in commercial matters. When you go to a foreign country and ask a man in a shop to sell you a hat or neck-tie or pair of gloves, and you ask, "Is this the best you have?" His answer is, "It is British, Sir," and that ends it. When you find that in some of those other countries they put up their hand and swear by the word of a Britisher, it is a compliment to the combined material and moral qualities of the British nation. (Applause)

As I analyse the British situation it is this: before the war British trade rested practically upon four points: first, cheap and good coal; second, cheap and plentiful money, more than enough for themselves so that they were able to finance abroad, which carried trade with it; third, cheap living; fourth, cheap in-and-out water transport. They still have good coal, but not cheap coal. today they are gaining faster in their export of coal than in any one of their commercial assets, but the commercial asset of coal is a declining asset, for every ton you take out is a ton less; it has no reproduction, like the ordinary kind of industry. Undoubtedly Britain has the best coal in the world, but it is not now cheap. She has cheap money, but not over-plentiful, and the money is cheap because industry is slow. She has not a great deal of money for outside enterprises. The third is cheap living. She has not that as she had before the war; living is possibly cheaper than here, but nothing like the cost of living before the war. The fourth, in-and-out water transport, is not cheap; in fact it is two or three times pre-war values. Now, supposing she had prewar conditions, where did she formerly sell her goods?

In the world there are 550 millions of white people. It is generally admitted that they are the constructive and consuming elements of the world, and I think that is right. Now, 450 millions of the 550 millions live in Europe. Great Britain's trade was largely with Europe; secondly, with the near and far East; third, with the North and South Americas. Britain's European trade is absolutely destroyed. Their trade in the near and far East is disputed by Germany, Japan and the United States. The American trade is curtailed by the desire of the people who live in both. North and South America to produce more of what they now buy abroad, and sell more abroad. So Britain is handicapped in every direction in matters of trade as it existed before the war. She has a very serious problem before her, but I have no doubt that her indomitable industry will come to her rescue, and that in time she will attain a very fair amount of her pre-war trade.

The solution of that problem, in my judgment, is a greater realization, on the part of the British public, of the wonderful resources within her own Empire. I do not believe there is any country in continental Europe more essential to the British Empire, nor more worth a worthy fight, than the Dominion of Canada. (Applause) Therefore let us look with confidence and with co-operation to the development of our own material resources. There is no part of the Empire in which there is such a great variety and such an essential variety of natural resources as in Canada. Recently I had the pleasure of a trip through the northern section, seeing not only the agricultural resources, which are the basis of this country's greatness and prosperity, but also the mining, which. is remarkable. I shall not be at all surprised to find that within the next ten or fifteen years Canada will become the largest producer of gold in the whole world. (Applause) Recently in England I had an opportunity of trying to induce British capital and British interests to realize those wonderful resources, and we have put on an exhibition of the minerals, together with a great newspaper campaign, and the result is already evident, and I am asking the government of the day to send to London a specially qualified man who will be resident there, to give information on this one particular subject. (Applause) The Britishers understand our agriculture, but they do not think of us as an industrial people, and they do not understand or appreciate the natural mineral resources of this province.

Now for the geographical situation; that is, the matter of distribution of population. In the whole British Empire there are less than sixty-five millions of white people, forty-five millions of whom live in England, Scotland and Ireland; the balance, twenty millions, being scattered over various parts of the Empire. I think the British Government and all students of our Empire realize that there is danger in congestion, and there is also danger in the spots that are not occupied. If we do not earmark the vacant places within the Empire for our children of British descent, how are we going to defend these places from the aggression of other races. The tents of other races are being stretched, and they do not think the whole world was made for the whites; they feel that they were here before us, and that they have a perfect right to enter upon lands of other races, providing those races cannot themselves use them. It is therefore necessary that the British race should ear-mark all the important spots within our own sphere as future residences for the occupation of our children. The British Government realize that those forty-five millions which they have are not properly adjusted. Less than three and a half millions are occupied on the land, and living by it. That includes every kind of person, domestic servant, hostlers, camp-keepers, foresters, and every kind of person occupied in and by the land; and they produce their requirements in food within a very small percentage. The balance of the population of Great Britain have to go into industry, the product of which has to be sent abroad to bring back their food. Of this three millions odd there are a certain number who are undoubtedly satisfied and successful, and there are a certain number that are not qualified for emigration. I speak of them in that sense just as one of the features to which I will refer shortly as the sources of possible emigration to this country.

Great Britain finds that her population increases by five millions every ten years, and she has the problem of the distribution of those people. She has taken it up, and has appropriated $15,000,000 yearly for five years to be given in the way of assisted passages and settlement to her own people to go to different parts of the Empire's dominions. This is a step in the right direction, and they are willing to co-operate with any organization of the provinces or of the various dominions who will enter into an arrangement on the basis of fifty-fifty for the proper administration and assistance to British people who wish to settle in various parts of the Empire.

So far as emigration is concerned, you have to remember that successful people, satisfied people, people of the better class whose family associations are dear to them, do not leave their own country, or so few leave that it is not a matter of any account. On the other hand, the sub-normal, physical and mental defectives of various sorts, must perforce remain in the country of their origin. Thus you have a narrow line of population to work on, and--in this narrow line we have certain ones that we have been dealing with.

I may say, as a matter of encouragement for emigration, that there are three or four things which induce it. The first is ambition, not a personal ambition, but an ambition for one's family; that is, the man compares the prospects and opportunities of some other country, not necessarily Canada, with his own, and therefore he is liable to move perhaps to United States, or some other country outside of the Dominions. The second motive is the uncomfortable, unhappy, unpleasant local, domestic or economic circumstances which, in themselves, induce people to separate. They might go anywhere. The third motive is need. That is the basis of child emigration, and of a certain amount of other emigration, where the man says, "Oh, well, I could not be any worse off, no matter where I go." The fourth motive is adventure. That is a characteristic of British people, and we find that most of the people leave Great Britain for the first and fourth reasons mentioned.

Our own requirements for the present are what we may call agricultural. There are plenty of people there to fill casual and mechanical vacancies when wanted, but there are not so many to fill the agricultural needs. We have been inducing the small farmer, or the tenant farmer with moderate capital who can shift for himself, and we have been able to induce some who brought large sums of money, and in a few cases very large amounts. We had eighteen families bringing with them about £80,000 in cash. We have given very strong attention to the farmer with small means. The second class is the unattached farm labourer, that is, the unmarried farm worker. During this last year there have come to Ontario probably about 600 of those men, half of whom have paid their own way, the other half being paid by the British Government under the soldiers' plan. We have also brought out 2,000 domestic servants to this province, quite a few of whom received passage assistance. There is no passage assistance given to men yet. In the case of domestics we give up to eighteen pounds sterling where necessary, and I am pleased to say that out of all the amounts which have been advanced this province will probably not lose more than two or three percent, and most of that by death or accident. (Applause)

The other agricultural character we are seeking is the married agricultural worker who has a family. He has never been able to move, and with assisted passage given to him we will have what I term our best settler. Out of the two classes, domestics and unattached farm workers, we have what I call our class of "drifters." They come out here feeling that they have the advantage of two countries, and wherever their method of living seems the easiest, there the magnet is the strongest. They seem to think they have three opportunities: one, to succeed here; one, to succeed in the United States; and one, to go home, which is within reach. With the married men we have the settlers, and I hope the British Government and our own Government will come together and give assistance to that particular class of men, who are most desirable, but have never been able to leave their own country. (Applause) In connection with the settlement of married men, part of the programme is to provide, in some way, a place for him here. You cannot bring that man here at present; there is really no farm home to put him in, much as he would like to come, and much as we would like to have him. Provision must be made for a home for the man. Perhaps some inducement will be offered to build farm cottages; several plans have been suggested. I, as well as others, have suggested that we go slowly, perhaps bring out in the first instance a few married men who can afford to leave their families at home; place them with farmers here and see how they get on, and if a man and a farmer agree, then provide a cottage built to take his family. That is a sensible way to proceed, and if we find the plan working properly, we can bring the family and the man together and place him on the soil. This helps to solve two great problems in our agricultural community. The first is the steady direct help, and the means of supplying temporary help which is so important on farms. It also helps the domestic side of the question, for there never was a time in this province, or any other province, for that matter, where the farmer's wife required assistance more than at present. The lack of assistance to farmers' wives has been the greatest means of taking men off the farm, (hear, hear) and if we can give them a reasonable prospect of good and efficient help, it will make for contentment, and therefore the farmer who has a family of two or three boys and two or three girls living in a cottage not far distant will be supplied with labour conveniently and economically. There are very few farmers who can afford to pay the current price of domestic help; it is too high in any case, and I hope that the "assisted" plan, instead of bringing 2,000 girls, will in a short time bring 10,000 here, for you could utilize every one of them.

Then, outside of those particular classes, we have looked about to see where material could be found that would make farm helpers and settlers. We receive every year in this country, through the various charitable organizations, 6,000 children, boys and girls. It has been shown that from ninety percent to ninety-five percent of all those children make good. Now, it is a peculiar thing how those children are collected. In Great Britain there are about 260 charitable organizations collecting the neglected and orphan children, boys and girls. The first duty of the local home is to prepare them for certain things. In the case of boys there are three things to prepare for: first, to make a sailor; second, to make a man on a ship, merchant-marine or navy; third, the most important, to make a bandsman out of the boy. Now, all the boys who qualify to the best degree for those three purposes are kept at home. In the case of girls the most important feature of all homes is to prepare the girl for do-service, occasionally a seamstress, and once in a while a stenographer. All that are qualified are kept at home. All those that are not qualified, that are mentally defective, are sent through the ordinary channels for export, and ninety percent of them make good. There are three degrees of children, you may say. First, the wards of the board schools of England, which are the guardian boards which those children mostly come through. Secondly, there is what we call here the ordinary public school, but which is known as the board school there, which is attended by the ordinary sons of tradesmen, carpenters, mechanics, all first-class English stock, legitimate in every way. Thirdly, boys from the higher-grade schools, which are known as the public schools, such as Rugby and Eton and Harrow and Haileyboro, where the education costs from £100 to £200 a year.

My idea is to give all encouragement possible to the importation of children to this country. The Barnardo people have had an offer made to them by Australia to take every one of the boys who are qualified under their regulations, and at the ship's side, without further expense to the Barnardo institution. When you consider that the Barnardo institution spent last year in the Dominion of Canada, in transporting the boys and administration of the affairs there, $135,000, you can understand what Australia has offered them. I do not know how far that will affect the emigration of suitable boys from that quarter to this institution; that remains to be seen; but Australia is pretty hard up for boys.

Now, the boys I have taken an interest in are those that belong to the ordinary public schools. In going to the Minister of Labour of Great Britain he turned me over to the Juvenile Branch, where I was informed there are about 600,000 children who leave school every year at fourteen years of age, a large proportion of those being boys. Before the war those boys were absorbed in the ordinary channels of business, but conditions since the war preclude that, so the government instituted juvenile schools to take care of children up to sixteen years of age, which is the present school age. The plan has not worked; the schools were costing too much for good effects, so they have hundreds of thousands of good boys at loose ends, and the government does not know what to do with them.

I propose to form what I term "The Ontario Farmer Cadets," in which the parents would enlist those boys at ages of fourteen, sixteen, or seventeen for a period of four years. They have to stay four years, and could be brought back to their job in case they should not like it. This cadet corps would be formed in small units of ten, up to twenty, so that a small school can form a unit in itself, and from that school or the neighbourhood, or through the association of the parents, there shall be chosen a Cadet Master, a man known to the boys and known to the neighbourhood, who will have the moral responsibility to act as father to that unit. They will be brought out to this country and put into an army but built in some part of the rural district, with accommodation for the required number, with a living room and kitchen. The boys will come out under the same idea as those who form the Scout element in their own country. They will have as their head a man in sympathy with them, who understands their point of view, who has the confidence of their country and their own parents, and who will have the best interests of the boys at heart. The idea is then to distribute these boys by apprenticeship to the surrounding farmers, at a wage to be agreed on; a five-dollar wage to be paid to the boy in cash for his work, the balance to be paid to the government for his credit, out of which the Cadet Master shall furnish his clothing.

In making a district such as this the idea is that such cadet home will be a real home for the boys. It is pretty difficult to take a young boy and put him on a Canadian farm and be sure of him receiving just the treatment to which he is entitled, and I would not for a minute propose such a condition unless there was some immediate resort close by for the boy to go to. In this case he has his own home, so to speak; he has his own father in the Cadet Master, and he goes to him with a complaint it is the duty of the master to go to the farmer and try to settle it, and if he fails he can call on the government to undertake it, and the farmer must be made to realize that the welfare of this boy is as important as his work.

With this sort of scheme in force, it might be hoped that if nothing else were done we would be making a constructive movement amongst boys. It must be remembered that this is an opportune time for such a plan, as the entire world today is interested in boys' movements, and the country that is giving most attention today to the interests of youth is Germany. They are keenly alive to the fact that the future is the only reward they are going to get out of the present, and that whatever may come from present material advantage is not to be compared with what can be done by the youth in the next two or three generations. I feel, therefore, that this scheme is at least a constructive one, and one that appeals to men and to women. It can be carried to your own boys here, and it can be also applied to girls in the same way, through the Girl Guide Movement. The word "Cadet" brings something to the boy that he knows, and it has no institutional tint or taint. It is a little above the Scout Movement, and it has the ideas of authority and discipline and obedience, all of which things are necessary. The first and most important thing is obedience, because out of that comes the general welfare of any community.

This plan involves a certain amount of money. The British Government have considered it, through Col. Amery. In his opinion it has in it the first and soundest rudiments for good emigration of any scheme that has been presented, owing to its strengthening of character, and I believe the British Government will favourably consider the putting up of half of all the money required to carry out this plan. It is not expensive. We estimate that each unit of ten boys will cost $5,000 to start, and after that the expense would be to maintain the work. By having the units small they would be distributed over a wide area, and therefore would be collected over a wide area. If a boy is in headquarters number nine, we will suppose, and he does not like the fruit business, he may be transferred to unit number twenty-seven, say in Oxford County, where dairying is the chief industry. In the four years the boy would have his choice of the kind and character of farming in order to find the one most suitable for him, and would also be trained in the characteristic branches of agriculture in the counties or districts most suited for those special branches or forms of agriculture, so that, at the end of four years, if he does not want to stay on the land, he has to learn a job at which he can always make a good living, and the life he has spent in agriculture in the open air, with the advantages of a home close by, would have given him a good start for learning such a job.

The home for these Cadets would become community centres for the young people of the district, because we propose to have in them some of the essentials which the English boy requires, that is, a tennis court, a cricket field, a billiard table, and other things which are necessary to their ordinary style of life. It would be impossible to bring boys out here and put them into conditions far removed from what they have been accustomed to, and expect them to be successful. In emigration you cannot move people from superior to inferior conditions and make a success of it. You have to meet the opportunity and adapt your plan to the character of the men you bring here. The only way to do that is to have some form of educational instruction which shall be personal and adapted to the welfare of the newcomer, while developing the national spirit. He must not be looked down upon, but the hand of encouragement and assistance must be extended until he has been reasonably settled, and until he can write home and say, "Come on!" Those are the only two words we need in England in order to make a rush to this country, for this is the guarantee that the people who have preceded them are being well treated and are satisfied.

We hear two objections to our country. The first is that it is cold. The general tendency of the British public is towards the warmer climates. They seem to forget that you can be colder in England at any time than you can be here. (Laughter) I have tried it, and we can overcome it with them; but they often say, "Are you in the dry belt?" Taking it from the idea of the west, I tell them of dry farming, and that there is a scientific method of dry farming; but they reply, "Oh, no, we don't mean the west, we mean the liquor question." (Laughter) Well, now, that is astonishing; there is no class of man on the face of the earth who resents anything that has the flavour of interference with personal liberty more than the Englishman. I have had a great deal of difficulty in explaining to him that it would be a great advantage to him to live in a country where he could not buy a drink, but I tell you it is a difficult subject, and while I have no opinion to express upon your present policy (laughter) I can only tell you what the people in that country say of it. It is a difficult problem to me.

In summing up the situation, and to be brief, I think the question, taking it all around, is one of personal and collective effort, and the key-note in it all is the one word: "Work." In every place to which I have gone I have found a disposition on the part of the people to take life too easily, and not seriously enough in these times. Work and thrift are the only qualities that will meet this situation profitably and successfully. It is an individual matter as well as a collective one, and I believe that only by those means and by co-operative and cohesive interest in the welfare of our whole Empire shall we succeed in overcoming the present time and conditions. (Loud applause)

THE PRESIDENT expressed the thanks of the Club to Mr. Noxon for his excellent address.