Two Tokens of National Progress

Mr. President and Gentlemen,

There is nothing, I should think, more reassuring than this token, that we are gathered together, with many others in a similar capacity, for an interest in affairs beyond our own somewhat limited lives. There is nothing more wholesome, nothing more salubrious to the whole life of our nation than this detachment from the individual interest and the merging with the interest of the community as a whole. I think that is the one high purpose of these Clubs, and I know of few serving it more successfully than this Club which bears an Imperial name, which name finds significance in the hearts of all the members.

Of course you will have to define what progress really is. I suppose there is hardly any term more cryptic and more capable of misinterpretation than progress. Some think it can be determined only from Bradstreet or Dun in the individual or national life. We say of a man, "How is he getting along?" "Oh, very well, he has bought a slice of land on this street and sold it for so much more than he paid for it." There is a vast realm that is not to be measured in that way. For instance the physical realm, the moral realm, the intellectual realm, and the domestic realm, to say nothing of the higher hemispheres of life, all of which must be considered if you are going, in any complete and full-orbed sense, to say whether a man is getting on or not. Many of us would revise our estimates if we only knew the fullness of that term. Sometimes success is not all success. What is true of individuals is true of nations, such as we deem ourselves to be. I suppose Rome thought it was getting on well, and so did Greece, yet the hectic flush of death was on the cheek of one, and the pallor of decay on the brow of the other. It is possible that we have that peril today--the intoxication of an exuberant prosperity.

There are some things of a material kind that indicate progress. The first is the improvement in the condition of two classes of people, and the first of these two classes is the poor. I live a great deal among the poor; whenever I am not away from home I am dwelling among the poor, I am thoroughly familiar with their circumstances, and I think it is one of the signs of the times that we have a growing sense of responsibility for the condition of the poor. I think we too often judge our national progress and success in terms of skyscrapers; I do not mean anything local or structural, but we do feel that the climax reached there is indicative of national progress, forgetting that the average must determine it. We sometimes think we are a successful country because we are beginning to count our millionaires as they do in New York, not only the open and visible ones but the clandestine ones that may lurk all about us. I think that is a mistake. We must consider this, that one of the first tokens of national progress is to be determined when we ask what is the condition of the masses, and I think that condition is most reassuring. I live in an industrial town. I think one of the finest signs of the day is this, that the people in what we call the lower walks of life are better clothed, better housed, better taught, better fed-and that is a very important thing. I think a great deal of the ravages of the liquor traffic is caused by bad cooking due to slatternly domestic life. I think that we shall come to our coronation as a nation largely in proportion to the development and comfort and attractiveness and brightness among the poor. You may not have had your attention called to this fact before, but I think there is nothing more reassuring than the increase in the refinement of the homes of the poor. I am a Presbyterian, and Presbyterians have always been accused of being in favour of great plainness in living. We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal, and that is a fine thing; but, when it comes to high living and high thinking both together, the Scotchman can be about as resigned to both as any one I know. That is a characteristic of the Scotch, that they can cultivate some literature on a very little oatmeal. I think Presbyterians have erred in plainness in ecclesiastical life. My fathers taught that if you had been pretty uncomfortable all day Sunday it had been a truly pious day.

In proportion as man has moved away from the savage he has come to refinement, delicacy, and some measure of upholstery, of something that relieves the bareness of life. Our pioneer forefathers lived bare lives, but they were none the better for that; we are better for the development that has been made. When you consider the condition of the poor today, of the mechanic, the artisan, the labourer, I am confident that for variety of food and comfort in their homes, superiority of cooking, and intellectual surroundings and such provocations to a higher life, we have it a hundred-fold better than it was thirty or forty years ago. The thing I have against the civilization of the Old Land is this, that the emancipation of the poor has never come from where it ought to come, that is from above. It has never come from the classes; the masses have had to fight for it all themselves. Where men have station and noble family- and endowment and high talent, especially where it flowers into genius, to my mind that is a gift of God in return for which they ought to consider themselves responsible for the condition of the poor. That is one thing, I think, that Britain can claim credit for above the millionairedom of the rest of the world, that their nobility accept responsibility for their tenantry.

Look at Canada and what do we see? Except for a few matters that are ornamental, the poor are about as well off as the rich. Fresh air, good cooking, a little music, accessibility to books, all these the poor have here in almost as great measure as the rich. Barring the ornamentation, the upholstery, and some measure of decoration that wealth gives, I think we can say, with a measure of confidence, that there is about as good living among the poor as there is among the rich. When one looks at the condition here of what we call the working classes, I think we have everything to be thankful for.

Now; let us consider the introduction of the elements that are swelling our industrial classes. In some quarters there is an objection to the introduction of foreigners, I mean Europeans and Orientals. One of the anomalies of our condition is that we talk about the working-man and about keeping him free from foreign rivalry; but we have men who have come to us from India, men who have borne medals on their breasts for service under the Imperial flag, and they have been turned away from our doors. These same men have afterwards been admitted to the United States and been admitted free. I think that is a blot on our Dominion. Personally, I think what this country needs is labour. We have hundreds and thousands of acres as yet untouched by the plough, and few conceive the necessity there is for ever-increasing supplies of labour. You say foreigners sell their labour cheap; that is not true. Labour is cheap in proportion as it is unskilled. I suppose my hand is cheap, but put behind it some skill and cunning, and it becomes less cheap. Labour is always sold for manual strength plus learning and skill. Just in proportion as these men become manually dexterous and familiar with the arts and trades, just in that proportion you may be sure the price of their labour will go up until the whole thing equalizes itself.

One of the fortunate things about the poor is that they are unsatisfied; that is a fine thing. What seems true at first is very seldom permanently true. One of the fine features of our poor in contradistinction to those of Germany, for example, is that they are unsatisfied, there is a fine ferment that always makes for convalescence. One of the fine features of our whole industrial life is this spirit of unrest, ever making toward promotion and evolution of their condition, always, we trust, subservient to sane counsel and wise leadership. I think we have no reason to be afraid of this. Always in history the problems that vex today please tomorrow.

That is the first token of national progress; and the second is this, the prosperity of the rich. Everybody is willing to laud this signal of national prosperity if the condition of the poor be improving, and he is not a true man who does not take to his own heart and into his own bosom some share at least of the great world-wide sorrow that rests upon the labouring and the toiling all over this terrestrial globe. But I think that one of the great signs of national progress is the acquisition of great wealth. Men lift their hands and say, "Alas, Alas, we are going to get into the hands of money." But I think it is a good thing we are having some men and corporations who are becoming very rich. I believe that the future will see fortunes made in Canada beyond all that we now conceive of. I think the men who we call rich now will later on take their fitting place as men who are but on the portals of the great temple of wealth that this country is to know.

I think we have a singular opportunity; I think Canada stands in a position of unique advantage. We have, as the world has never seen it before, a country that was born rich, I mean ourwestern plains. Men are almost born rich out there. We have that heritage at our hand, and we have the rare spectacle of seeing the wealth of the west coming to meet the wealth of the east, just as the civilization of the west comes to meet the civilization of the east. I think that is going to give us a wonderful progress, the climax and outcome of which the most sanguine do not dream.

Some look at our great buildings and say there is soy much peril in wealth. I do not think there is peril in wealth any more than in any other kind of power. Wealth is not the greatest kind of power. I like to put in a plea for the talking man. Sometimes they talk as if the man of words were not worth his keep. I should think there would be more reason to be afraid of a man like W. J. Bryan than of a man like Pierpont Morgan. One has more power than the other. Thirty years ago when the Republicans were beaten for the first time since the war, I think it was conceded that, despite all that money and combination and organization could do, there was one man who swung New York state, and that was Henry Ward Beecher, a talking man, a life long Republican, but changing then because he thought it wise to change. The same thing might be said of Lloyd George today, and of other men. So when you come to consider the classification of power, let it never for a moment be conceded that the rich man is the most powerful man. We had better appoint a committee to guard and curb and otherwise restrain the man of great demagogic gifts rather than the man who can count his wealth in millions. These two must both be restrained. It seems to me that it was meant from all eternity that some men should be richer than others. The trouble is that some men are unjustly rich, and I think we must accept that. Some men must be unjustly rich from the standard of their contributions to worthy causes. Some men are born richer than others, I mean in things higher than money. Some are born with handsome persons, some with "bodily presence weak, and speech contemptible." I think it is one of the greatest arguments against the contentions of the socialists that one man should be as rich as another, that the Divine Creator has made a difference. If I have any quarrel with Providence because one man has more money than another, surely I have a greater because another man has more intellectual activity than I have. Some men are born Aeolian harps, and some are born crowbars, and you cannot make a crowbar into an Aeolian harp. If there is disparity, it begins at the very beginning and at the hands of our great Creator. We ought to accept that to begin with, that some men must be richer than others.

But we can present another plea, I think. For the development of the nation we must have great wealth; it lies back of all progress in architecture, in science, in education, in domestic life itself. The man with much money provides labour for the poorer man; the home of the humble man depends on the prosperity of the rich man. You have only to look abroad to see the truth of what I have said. All we have in our national life above the mere materialistic has had its roots in money. Look at the West; I said that was a land born rich; what was the result? You know how long they toiled here in the early days and at last they achieved a University of Toronto and, after a while, one in Kingston, and then one in Montreal, and that is about the end of it. What do we see in the West? There is the immediate product of wealth,--a University in Winnipeg, a University in Saskatoon, a University in Edmonton, and a University in Vancouver, and all with such a scant population. This is a striking evidence of the truth of what I have said of the product that comes at once in the finer and more delicate side of life from what you may call the coarse, materialistic soil of mere money. In the United States take the names of McCormick, Rockefeller, Carnegie. The money may be made in steel, but it blossoms in literature. The same thing is true of museums and art palaces, as of Universities. Witness the case of Montreal, enriched by the great benefactions of two men who made their money in the most prosaic way, but who have spent it in the most artistic way. In your own city of Toronto what do we see? I was going along College Street, when I was struck with that building of wonderful length and breadth and depth, that great edifice sacred to the healing of the human body, as truly a cathedral as any in England or in Rome that ever lifted their domes to catch the benediction of the rising sun. Could we have had that unless there had been the accumulation of wealth in the hands of some men? In regard to Art, Science, Medical Research,--witness these various commissions in Great Britain and in the United States. I think we have reason to be thankful that the tendency, on the whole, all over our country, is to a reverent use of wealth. I think that is increasing, we are in that perilous and delicate state when we are just learning how to use money. One of the trying things in the life of any country is getting the tools, the edged tools, into our hands.

To revert again to the lower classes; this is always to be remembered, that just in proportion as the scale goes up with the rich it ascends in a corresponding ratio with the poor. You will find unconsciously the poor imitate, until if the rich man has a victrola, some one a scale lower has a graphanola, and another a pianola; this man may have only an organ, and that an old-fashioned melodeon, and another a concertina or a jew's harp; some one has a canary bird, or at least a Singer sewing-machine (laughter) which as you will admit has a melodious name. It is true, I think, that in proportion as the scale goes up with the rich, there is, perhaps following it afar off, a corresponding rise on the part of the poor. It is one of the striking things in our Canadian homes. These two tokens go hand in hand and we should rejoice in the one as much as in the other. I shall not keep you longer except to say that such tokens as these should fill our hearts with a fine sanguineness, not with dolorous predictions of dolorous futures.

This Dominion of ours, nestling, as Dufferin said, at the feet of a mother, is majestically dreaming a dream and framing a destiny of which no one has yet an adequate conception. Separated from the old feudal grave clothes that are now hampering the Mother Land, casting wide open the golden door of privilege and advantage to the son of a peasant or the son of a prince, and waiting for the development, of the wealth of mine and lake and field and forest, I feel that these twain-our rich and our poor-working hand in hand, and heart in heart, and hope in hope, will upbuild this nation in that righteousness which alone exalteth it, in that peace and comfort, which is a perpetual joy and blessing. (Applause)