CHAPTER IX
THE SORE THOUGHT
The toad beneath the harrow knows
Everywhere the tooth mark goes;
The butterfly upon the road
Preaches contentment to the toad.
Women have had to do a lot of waiting—long, weary waiting. The well-brought-up young lady diligently prepares for marriage; makes doilies, and hemstitches linen; gets her blue trunk ready and—waits. She must not appear anxious or concerned—not at all; she must just—wait. When a young man comes along and shows her any attention, she may accept it, but if after two or three years of it he suddenly leaves her, and devotes himself to some other girl, she must not feel hurt or grieved but must go back and sit down beside the blue trunk again and—wait! He has merely exercised the man's right of choosing, and when he decides that he does not want her, she has no grounds for complaint. She must consider herself declined, "not from any lack of merit, but simply because she is unavailable." If her heart breaks, it must break quietly, and in secret.
She may see a young man to whom she feels attracted, but she must not show it by even so much as the flicker of an eyelash. Hers is the waiting part, and although marriage and homemaking are her highest destiny, or at least so she has been told often enough—she must not raise a hand to help the cause along. No more crushing criticism can be made of a woman, than that she is anxious to get married. It is all right for her to be passively willing, but she must not be anxious.
At dances she must wait until someone asks her to dance; wait until someone asks her to go to supper. She must not ever make the move—she must not ever try to start something. Her place is to wait!
At last her waiting is rewarded and a young man comes by who declares he would like to marry her, but is not in a position to marry just yet. Then begins another period of waiting. She must not hurry him—that is very indelicate—she must wait. Sometimes, in this long period of waiting, the young man changes his mind, but she must not complain. A man cannot help it if he grows tired. It must have been her fault—she did not make herself sufficiently attractive—that's all! She waits again.
At last perhaps she gets married. But her periods of waiting are not over. Her husband wanders free while she stays at home. We know the picture of the waiting wife listening for footsteps while the clock ticks loudly in the silent house. The world has decreed that the woman and home must stay together, while the man goes about his business or his pleasures—the tied-up woman and the foot-loose man.
Her boys grow up, and when war breaks out, they are called away from her, and again the woman waits. Every telegraph boy who comes up the street may bring the dreaded message; every time the door bell rings her heart stops beating. But she cannot do anything but wait! wait! wait!
Did you ever visit an old folks' home and notice the different spirit shown by the men and women there? The old men are restless and irritable; impatient of their inaction; rebellious against fate. The old women patiently wait, looking out with their dimmed eyes like marooned sailors waiting for a breeze. Poor old patient waiters! you learned the art of waiting in a long hard school, and now you have come to the last lap of the journey.
So they wait—and by and by their waiting will be over, for the kindly tide will rise and bear them safely out on its strong bosom to some place—where they will find not more rest but blessed activity! We know there is another world, because we need it so badly to set this one right!
Women have not always been "waiters." There was a day long past, when women chose their mates, when men fought for the hand of the woman they loved, and the women chose. The female bird selects her mate today, goes out and makes her choice, and, it is not considered unbirdly either.
Why should not women have the same privilege as men to choose their mate? Marriage means more to a woman than to a man; she brings in a larger contribution than he; often it happens that she gives all—he gives nothing. The care and upbringing of the children depend upon her faithfulness, not on his. Why should she not have the privilege of choosing?
Too long has the whole process of love-making and marriage been wrapped in mystery. "Part of it has been considered too holy to be spoken of and part of it too unholy," says Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Innocence has been esteemed a young girl's greatest charm, but what good has her innocence done her? No good at all! It is not calculated to do her good—her good is not the prime consideration. It makes her more charming in the eyes of men; but it may bring her great unhappiness. Lady Evelyn's trusting heart has usually been broken. When the story begins about the farmer's pretty daughter with limpid blue eyes, sweet as bluebells washed in dew, all innocent of the world ways, the experienced reader knows at once what is coming. Innocence is hard on the woman, however charming it may be to men. The women who go a step beyond innocence and are so trusting as to be described as simple-minded, no matter how gentle, patient, and sweet they are, are absolutely unsafe in this world of man's chivalry and protection. If you want to know what fate overtakes them, ask the matron of the Refuge for Unfortunate Women, ask any person who has worked among this class of women, and they will tell you how much good innocence and the trusting heart does any woman. This is a sore thought!
It would be perfectly delightful if our daughters might remain innocent. They should have that privilege. Innocence belongs to childhood and girlhood, but under present conditions, it is as dangerous and foolish as level and unguarded railway crossings, or open and unguarded trap doors. It is no pleasant task to have to tell a joyous, sunny-hearted girl of fourteen or fifteen about the evils that are in the world, but if you love her, you will do it! I would like to see this work done by trained motherly and tactful women, in the department of social welfare, paid by the school board. I know the mothers should do it, but many mothers are ignorant, foolish, lax, and certainly untrained. The mother's kindly counsel is the best, I know, but you cannot always rely upon its being there. This is coming, too, for public sentiment is being awakened to the evils of innocence.
I remember, twenty years ago, when Dr. Amelia Yeomans, of sainted memory, published at her own expense, a little leaflet called "Warning to Girls" and circulated it among girls who were working in public places, what a storm of abuse arose. I have a copy of the little tract, and it could be safely read in any mixed gathering today. Ministers raged against it in the pulpit. I remember one brother who was very emphatic in his denunciations who afterwards was put out of the church for indecent conduct. Of course he wanted girls to remain innocent—it suited his purpose.
If any person doubts that the society of the present day has been made by men, and for men's advantage, let them look for a minute at the laws which govern society. Society allows a man all privilege, all license, all liberty, where women are concerned. He may lie to women, deceive them—"all's fair in love and war"—he may break many a heart, and blast many a fair name; that merely throws a glamour around him. "He's a devil with women," they say, and it is no disadvantage in the business or political world—where man dominates. But if a man is dishonest in business or neglects to pay his gambling bills, he is down and out. These are crimes against men—and therefore serious. This is also a sore thought!
Then when men speak of these things, they throw the blame on women themselves, showing thereby that the Garden of Eden story of Adam and Eve and the apple, whether it be historically true or not, is true to life. Quite Adam-like, they throw the blame on women, and say: "Women like the man with a past. Women like to be lied to. Women do not expect any man to be absolutely faithful to them, if he is pleasant. The man who has the reputation of having been wild has a better chance with women than the less attractive but absolutely moral man." What a glorious thing it will be when men cease to speak for us, and cease to tell us what we think, and let us speak for ourselves!
Since women's sphere of manual labor has so narrowed by economic conditions and has not widened correspondingly in other directions, many women have become parasites on the earnings of their male relatives. Marriage has become a straight "clothes and board" proposition to the detriment of marriage and the race. Her economic dependence has so influenced the attitude of some women toward men, that it is the old man with the money who can support her in idleness who appeals to her far more than the handsome, clean-limbed young man who is poor, and with whom she would have to work. The softening, paralyzing effects of ease and comfort are showing themselves on our women. You cannot expect the woman who has had her meals always bought for her, and her clothes always paid for by some man, to retain a sense of independence. "What did I marry you for?" cried a woman indignantly, when her husband grumbled about the size of her millinery bill. No wonder men have come to regard marriage as an expensive adventure.
The time will come, we hope, when women will be economically free, and mentally and spiritually independent enough to refuse to have their food paid for by men; when women will receive equal pay for equal work, and have all avenues of activity open to them; and will be free to choose their own mates, without shame, or indelicacy; when men will not be afraid of marriage because of the financial burden, but free men and free women will marry for love, and together work for the sustenance of their families. It is not too ideal a thought. It is coming, and the new movement among women who are crying out for a larger humanity, is going to bring it about.
But there are many good men who view this with alarm. They are afraid that if women were economically independent they would never marry. But they would. Deeply rooted in almost every woman's heart is the love of home and children; but independence is sweet and when marriage means the loss of independence, there are women brave enough and strong enough to turn away from it. "I will not marry for a living," many a brave woman has said.
The world has taunted women into marrying. So odious has the term "old maid" been in the past that many a woman has married rather than have to bear it. That the term "old maid" has lost its odium is due to the fact that unmarried women have made a place for themselves in the world of business. They have become real people apart from their sex. The "old maid" of the past was a sad, anemic creature, without any means of support except the bounty of some relative. She had not married, so she had failed utterly, and the world did not fail to rub it in. The unmarried woman of today is the head saleslady in some big house, drawing as big a salary as most men, and the world kowtows to her. The world is beginning to see that a woman may achieve success in other departments of life as well as marriage.
It speaks well for women that, even before this era, when "old maids" were open to all kinds of insult, there were women brave enough to refuse to barter their souls for the animal comforts of food and shelter. Speaking about "old maids," by which term we mean now a prim, fussy person, it is well to remember that there are male "old maids" as well as female who remain so all through life; also that many "old maids" marry, and are still old maids.
When women are free to marry or not as they will, and the financial burden of making a home is equally shared by husband and wife, the world will enter upon an era of happiness undreamed of now. As it is now, the whole matter of marrying and homemaking is left to chance. Every department of life, every profession in which men and women engage, has certain qualifications which must be complied with, except the profession of homemaking. A young man and a young woman say: "I believe we'll get married" and forthwith they do. The state sanctions it, and the church blesses it. They may be consumptive, epileptic, shiftless, immoral, or with a tendency to insanity. No matter. They may go on and reproduce their kind. They are perfectly free to bring children into the world, who are a burden and a menace to society. Society has to bear it—that is all! "Be fruitful and multiply!" declares the church, as it deplores the evils of race suicide. Many male moralists have cried out for large families. "Let us have better and healthier babies if we can," cried out one of England's bishops, not long ago, "but let us have more babies!"
Heroic and noble sentiment and so perfectly safe! It reminds one of the dentist's advertisement: "Teeth extracted without pain"—and his subsequent explanation: "It does not hurt me a bit!"
Martin Luther is said to have stood by the death-bed of a woman, who had given birth to sixteen children in seventeen years, and piously exclaimed: "She could not have died better!"
"By all means let us have more babies," says the Bishop. Even if they are anemic and rickety, ill-nourished and deformed, and even if the mothers, already overburdened and underfed, die in giving them birth? To the average thinking woman, this wail for large families, coming as it always does from men, is rather nauseating.
When the cry has been so persistently raised for more children, the women naturally wonder why more care is not exerted for the protection of the children who are already here. The reason is often given for not allowing women to have the free grants of land in Canada on the same conditions as men, that it would make them too independent of marriage, and, as one commissioner of emigration phrased it: "It is not independent women we want; it is population."
Granting that population is very desirable, would it not be well to save what we have? Six or seven thousand of our population in Canada drop out of the race every year as a direct result of the liquor traffic, and a higher percentage than this perish from the same cause in some other countries. Would it not be well to save them? Thousands of babies die every year from preventable causes. Free milk depositories and district nurses and free dispensaries would save many of them. In the Far West, on the border of civilization, where women are beyond the reach of nurses and doctors, many mothers and babies die every year. How would it be to try to save them? Delegations of public-spirited women have waited upon august bodies of men, and pleaded the cause of these brave women who are paying the toll of colonization, and have asked that Government nurses be sent to them in their hour of need. But up to date not one dollar of Government money has been spent on them notwithstanding the fact that when a duke or a prince comes to visit our country, we can pour out money like water!
It does not seem to the thoughtful observer that we need more children nearly so much as we need better children, and a higher value set upon all human life. In this day of war, when men are counted of less value than cattle, it is a doubtful favor to the child to bring it into life under any circumstances, but to bring children into the world, suffering from the handicaps caused by the ignorance, poverty, or criminality of the parents, is an appalling crime against the innocent and helpless, and yet one about which practically nothing is said. Marriage, homemaking, and the rearing of children are left entirely to chance, and so it is no wonder that humanity produces so many specimens who, if they were silk stockings or boots, would be marked "Seconds." The Bishop's cry has found many an echo: "Let us have more."
Women in several of the states have instituted campaigns for "Better Babies," and by offering prizes and disseminating information, they have given a better chance to many a little traveler on life's highway. But all who have endeavored in any way to secure legislation or government grants for the protection of children, have found that legislators are more willing to pass laws for the protection of cattle than for the protection of children, for cattle have a real value and children have only a sentimental value.
If children die—what of it? "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away." Let us have more. This is the sore thought with women. It is not that the bringing of children into the world is attended with pain and worry and weariness—it is not that: it is that they are held of such small value in the eyes of this man-made world. This is the sorest thought of all!
Even as I write these words, I hear the bugle calling, and down the street our brave boys in khaki are marching. Today I passed on the street a mother and her only son, who is now a soldier and going away with the next contingent. The lad was trying to cheer her as they walked along. She held him by the hand:—he was just a little boy to her.
"It was not for this that I raised him," she said to me bitterly. "It was not for this! The whole thing is wrong, and it is just as hard on the German women as on us!"
Even in her sorrow she had the universal outlook—the very thing that so many philosophers declare that women have not got!
I could not help but think that if there had been women in the German Reichstag, women with authority behind them, when the Kaiser began to lay his plans for the war, the results might have been very different. I do not believe women with boys of their own would ever sit down and wilfully plan slaughter, and if there had been women there when the Kaiser and his brutal war-lords discussed the way in which they would plunge all Europe into bloodshed, I believe one of those deep-bosomed, motherly, blue-eyed German women would have stood upon her feet and said: "William—forget it!" But the German women were not there—they were at home, raising children! So the preparations for war went on unchecked, and the resolutions passed without a dissenting voice. In German rule, we have a glorious example of male statecraft, uncontaminated by any feminine foolishness.
No doubt, it is because all our statecraft has been one-sided, that we find that human welfare has lagged far behind material welfare. We have made wonderful strides in convenience and comfort, but have not yet solved the problems of poverty, crime or insanity. Perhaps they, too, will yield to treatment when they are better understood, and men and women are both on the job. As it is now, criminals have only man's treatment, which is the hurry-up method—"hang him, and be done with him," or "chuck him into jail, and be quick about it, and let me forget him." Mothers would have more patience, more understanding, for they have been dealing with bad little boys all their lives.
The little family jars which arise in every home, are settled nine out of ten times by the mother, unless she is the sort of spineless, anemic woman, who lies down on the job, and says, "I'll tell your father," which acts as a threat, and sometimes is effective, though it solves no difficulty.
To hang the man who commits a crime is a cheap way to get out of a difficulty; a real masculine way. It is so much quicker and easier than trying to reform him, and what is one man less after all? Human life is cheap—to men—and of course there is always the Bishop crying: "Let us have more."
The conditions which prevail at the present time are atrocious and help to make criminals. The worst crimes have not even a name yet, much less a punishment. What about the crime of working little children and cheating them out of an education and a happy childhood? There is no name for it! What about misrepresenting land values and selling lots to people who have never seen them and who simply rely upon the owner's word; taking the hard-earned money from guileless people and giving them swamp land, miles out of the city limits, in return! They tell a story about a real-estate man who sold Edmonton lots to some people in the East, assuring them that the lots were "close in," but when the owner of the lots went to register them, he found they could not be registered in Alberta—they belonged in British Columbia, the next province!
This sort of thing is considered good business, if you can "get away with it." According to our masculine code of morals—it's "rather clever"—they say. "You cannot help but admire his nerve!" But not long since a hungry man stole a banana from a fruit stand and was sent to jail for it, for the dignity of the law has to be upheld, and the small thief is the easiest one to deal with and make an example of. Similarly Chinamen are always severely dealt with. Give it to him! He has no friends!
What about the crime of holding up the market, so that the price of bread goes up, causing poor men's children to go hungry? There is no name for it!
What about allowing speculators to hold great tracts of land uncultivated, waiting for higher prices, while unemployed men walk the streets, hungry and discouraged, cursing the day they were born: big strong fellows many of them, willing to work, craving work, but with work denied them. Yesterday one of them jumped from the High Level Bridge into the icy waters of the Saskatchewan, leaving a note behind him saying simply he was tired of it all, and could stand no more—he "would take a chance on another world." The idle land is calling to the idle man, and the world is calling for food; and yet these great tracts of wheat lands lie just outside our cities, untouched by plow or harrow, and hungry men walk our streets. The crime which the state commits in allowing such a condition to prevail is as yet unnamed.
Women have carried many a sore thought in their hearts, feeling that they have been harshly dealt with by their men folk, and have laid the blame on the individual man, when in reality the individual has not been to blame. The whole race is suffering from masculinity; and men and women are alike to blame for tolerating it.
The baby girl in her cradle gets the first cold blast of it. "A girl?" says the kind neighbor, "Oh, too bad—I am sure it was quite a disappointment!"
Then there is the old-country reverence for men, of which many a mother has been guilty, which exalts the boys of the family far above the girls, and brings home to the latter, in many, many ways, the grave mistake of having been born a woman. Many little girls have carried the sore thought in their hearts from their earliest recollection.
They find out, later, that women's work is taken for granted. A farmer will allow his daughter to work many weary unpaid years, and when she gets married he will give her "a feather bed and a cow," and feel that her claim upon him has been handsomely met. The gift of a feather bed is rather interesting, too, when you consider that it is the daughter who has raised the geese, plucked them, and made the bed-tick. But "father" gives it to her just the same. The son, for a corresponding term of service, gets a farm.
There was a rich farmer once, who died possessed of three very fine farms of three hundred and twenty acres each. He left a farm to each of his three sons. To his daughter Martha, a woman of forty years of age, the eldest of the family, who had always stayed at home, and worked for the whole family—he left a cow and one hundred dollars. The wording of the will ran: "To my dear daughter, Martha, I leave the sum of one hundred dollars, and one cow named 'Bella.'"
How would you like to be left at forty years of age, with no training and very little education, facing the world with one hundred dollars and one cow, even if she were named "Bella"?
To the poor old mother, sixty-five years of age, who had worked far harder than her husband, who had made butter, and baked bread, and sewed carpet rags, and was now bent and broken, and with impaired sight, he left: "her keep" with one of the boys!
How would you like to be left with "your keep" even with one of your own children? Keep! It is exactly what the humane master leaves to an old horse. When the old lady heard the will read which so generously provided for her "keep," she slipped away without a word. People thought it was her great grief at losing such a kind husband which made her pine and droop. But it wasn't. It was the loss of her independence. Her son and his family thought it strange that "Grandma" did not care to go to church any more. Of course her son never thought of giving her collection or money to give to the funds of the church, and Grandma did not ask. She sat in her corner, and knit stockings for her son's children; another pitiful little broken bit of human wreckage cast up by the waves of the world. In two months Grandma had gone to the house of many mansions, where she was no longer beholden to anyone for "keep"—for God is more merciful than man!
The man who made his will this way was not a bad man, but he was the victim of wrong thinking; he did not realize that his wife had any independence of soul; he thought that all "mother" cared about was a chance to serve; she had been a quiet, unassertive woman, who worked along patiently, and made no complaint. What could she need of money? The "boys" would never see her want.
A man who heard this story said in comment: "Well, I don't see what the old lady felt so badly about, for what does a woman of sixty-five need of money anyway?"
He was not a cruel man, either, and so his remark is illuminative, for it shows a certain attitude of mind, and it shows women where they have made their mistake. They have been too patient and unassertive—they have not set a high enough value on themselves, and it is pathetically true that the world values you at the value you place on yourself. And so the poor old lady, who worked all her life for her family, looking for no recompense, nor recognition, was taken at the value she set upon herself, which was nothing at all.
That does not relieve the state of its responsibility in letting such a thing happen. It is a hard matter, I know, to protect people from themselves; and there can be no law made to prevent women from making slaves of themselves to their husbands and families. That would be interfering with the sanctity of the home! But the law can step in, as it has in some provinces, and prevent a man from leaving his wife with only "her keep." The law is a reflection of public sentiment, and when people begin to realize that women are human and have human needs and ambitions and desires, the law will protect a woman's interest. Too long we have had this condition of affairs: "Ma" has been willing to work without any recompense, and "Pa and the boys" have been willing to let her.
Of course, I know, sentimental people will cry out, that very few men would leave their wives in poverty—I know that; men are infinitely better than the law, but we must remember that laws are not made to govern the conduct of good men. Good men will do what is right, if there were never a law; but, unfortunately, there are some men who are not good, and many more who are thoughtless and unintentionally cruel. The law is a schoolmaster to such.
There are some places, where a law can protect the weak, but there are many situations which require more than a law. Take the case of a man who habitually abuses and frightens his family, and makes their lives a periodic hell of fear. The law cannot touch him unless he actually kills some of them, and it seems a great pity that there cannot be some corrective measure. In the states of Kansas and Washington (where women vote) the people have enacted what is known as the "Lazy Husband's Act," which provides for such cases as this. If a man is abusive or disagreeable, or fails to provide for his family, he is taken away for a time, and put to work in a state institution, and his money is sent home to his family. He is treated kindly, and good influences thrown around him. When he shows signs of repentance—he is allowed to go home. Home, very often, looks better to him, and he behaves himself quite decently.
Women outlined this legislation and it is in the states where women vote that it is in operation. There will be more such legislation, too, when women are given a chance to speak out!
A New Zealander once wrote home to a friend in England advising him to fight hard against woman suffrage. "Don't ever let the wimmin vote, Bill," he wrote. "They are good servants, but bad masters. Over there you can knock your wife about for five shillings, but here we does jail for it!"
The man who "knocks his wife about" or feels that he might some day want to knock her about, is opposed to further liberties for women, of course.
But that is the class of man from whom we never expected anything. He has his prototype, too, in every walk of life. Don't make the mistake of thinking that only ignorant members of the great unwashed masses talk and feel this way. Silk-hatted "noblemen" have answered women's appeals for common justice by hiring the Whitechapel toughs to "bash their heads," and this is another sore thought that women will carry with them for many a day after the suffrage has been granted. I wish we could forget the way our English sisters have been treated in that sweet land of liberty!
The problems of discovery have been solved; the problems of colonization are being solved, and when the war is over the problem of world government will be solved; and then the problem will be just the problem of living together. That problem cannot be solved without the help of women. The world has suffered long from too much masculinity and not enough humanity, but when the war is over, and the beautiful things have been destroyed, and the lands laid desolate, and all the blood has been shed, the poor old bruised and broken heart of the world will cry out for its mother and nurse, who will dry her own eyes, and bind up its wounds and nurse it back to life once more. Perhaps the old earth will be a bit kinder than it has ever been to women, who knows? Men have been known to grow very fond of their nurse, and bleeding has been known to cure mental disorders!
CHAPTER X
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.