ay pour out, then she, the youngest of the
nations, must compete against the oldest and the strongest--Germany,
England, France, the United States; but if she is to be a great
agricultural country, then she has few peers in the whole world.
Neither need she have any fear. The nations of the world must come to
her, as they went down to Egypt, for bread. The man on his own land,
be his work good or ill owns his own labor and takes profit or loss
from it and can blame no one but himself for that profit or loss. With
the renting out of a man's labor to some other man for that other man's
profit or loss come all the discontent and class strife of industrial
warfare. Of industrial strife, of labor riots, of syndicalism, of
social revolution, of the few plundering the many, and the many
threatening reprisal in the form of legislation for the many to plunder
the few--of this dog-eat-dog, internecine industrial strife--Canada has
hitherto known next to nothing; but she is at the parting of the ways.
The day that a preponderance of her population becomes urban instead of
rural, that day a preponderance of her population must ask leave to
live from some other man--must ask leave to work for some other man,
must ask leave to put the collar of the industrial serf on the neck as
the sign of labor owned by some other man. That day the preponderance
of Canada's population will cease owning their own vested rights and
will begin attacking the vested rights of other men. That day
plutocracy will begin plundering democracy, and the unfit will begin
plundering the fit, and the many will demand the same rewards as the
few, not by winning those rewards and rising to the plane of the few,
but by expropriating those rewards and pulling the few down to the
level of the many. To me it means the sickling over a robust
nationhood with the yellowing hue of a dollar democracy, the yellowing
hue of gnashing social jealousy, the yellowing hue of moral putridity
and decadence and rot. Hitherto every man has stood on his own legs in
Canada. There has been no weak-kneed, puling greedy mob bellowing for
pap from the breasts of a state treasury--demanding the rewards of
industry and thrift which they have been too weak and shiftless and
useless to earn. But Canada is at the parting of the ways. The day
more men live in the cities demanding food than live on the soil
producing it--which God forfend--that day Canada goes down in the
welter of indus