retire
to the land where "the flag was a bloody rag." This, of course, proves
nothing for or against Socialism as a system. There was a Judas among
the apostles; but it illustrates the point that Canada is still at the
stage where every man may become a capitalist, a vested righter, the
owner of his own freehold. When every man may have a vested property
right in a country--not as a gift but as the reward of his own effort
in a fair field with no favors--it is a fairly safe prophecy that the
vested rights earned and held by the fit and the strong will never be
handed over as a gift to the unfit and the weak and the don't-trys.
The savings of the man who has not squandered his earnings on saloons
and reckless living will never be taxed to support in idleness--even an
idle old age--the feckless who have spent on stomach and lust what
other men save. Sounds hard; doesn't it, in the face of almost
universal nostrums for the salvation and propagation of the useless?
But it is like Canada's climate. Perhaps the climate has a good deal
to do with it. Hard it may be; but the issue is clean-cut and crystal
clear--work, or starve; be fit, or die; make good, or drop out; here is
a fair field and no favors! Gird yourself as a man to it, and no
puling puny whining for pity!

Can Canada keep a fair field and no favors? Her destiny as a power
depends on the answer to that question. In every city in Canada to-day
are growing up crowded foreign quarters peopled by men and women who
have never had a fair field--with class hate in their hearts for
inherited social wrongs; derelicts, no-goods, unfits, born unfit
through no fault of their own. Have they no claim? Can Canada as a
foster mother redeem such as these? Her destiny as a power depends on
the answer to this question, too. These people are coming to her. In
every city are tens of thousands of them. She needs these people.
They need her. Will it be a leveling down process for Canada or a
leveling up process for them? Before the nineties the average number
of inhabitants per house in urban Canada was three. By 1901 the
average was up to four. By 1911 it was up to five. In the crowded
centers as many as twenty a room have been found. If this sort of
thing continue and increase, Socialism will become a factor in Canada.
It will become a factor because every man or woman who has not had a
fair chance has a right to demand a change to a system that will give a
fair c