The Next of Kin: Those who Wait and Wonder

by Nellie L. McClung

But it is working in on us that something must be done. Now is the time to set in force certain agencies to make good these losses in so far as they can be repaired. Now is the time, when the excitement of the war is still on us, when the frenzy is still in our blood, for the time of reaction is surely to be reckoned with by and by. Now we are sustained by the blare of the bands and the flourish of flags, but in the cold, gray dawn of the morning after, we shall count our dead with disillusioned eyes and wonder what was the use of all this bloodshed and waste. Trade conditions are largely a matter of the condition of the spirit, and ours will be drooping and drab when the tumult and the shouting have died and the reign of reason has come back.

Personal thrift comes naturally to our minds when we begin to think of the lessons that we should take to heart. Up to the time of the war and since, we have been a prodigal people, confusing extravagance with generosity, thrift with meanness. The Indians in the old days killed off the buffalo for the sport of killing, and left the carcases to rot, never thinking of a time of want; and so, too, the natives in the North Country kill the caribou for the sake of their tongues, which are considered a real "company dish," letting the remainder of the animal go to waste.

This is a startling thought, and comes to one over and over again. You will think of it when you order your twenty-five cents' worth of cooked ham and see what you get! You will think of it again when you come home and find that the butcher delivered your twenty-five cents' worth of cooked ham in your absence, and, finding the door locked, passed it through the keyhole. And yet the prodigality of the Indian and the caribou-killer are infantile compared with the big extravagances that go on without much comment. Economy is a broad term used to express the many ways in which other people might save money. Members of Parliament have been known to tell many ways in which women might economize; their tender hearts are cut to the quick as they notice the fancy footwear and expensive millinery worn by women. Great economy meetings have been held in London, to which the Cabinet Ministers rode in expensive cars, and where they drank champagne, enjoining women to abjure the use of veils and part with their pet dogs as a war measure; but they said not a word about the continuance of the liquor business which rears its head in every street and has wasted three million tons of grain since the war began. What wonder is it that these childish appeals to the women to economize fall on deaf or indignant ears! Women have a nasty way of making comparisons. They were so much easier to manage before they learned to read and write.

The war wears on its weary course. The high cost of living becomes more and more of a nightmare to the people, yet the British Government tolerates a system which wastes more sugar than would feed the army, impairs the efficiency of the working-man one sixth, and wastes two million dollars every day in what is at best a questionable indulgence, and at worst a national menace. Speaking of economy, personal thrift, conservation, and other "win-the-war" plans, how would the elimination of the liquor traffic do for a start?

There are two ways of practicing economy: one is by refusing to spend money, which is not always a virtue; and the other is by increasing production, which is the greatest need of this critical time. The farmers are doing all they can: they are producing as much as they have means and labor for. But still in Canada much land is idle, and many people sit around wondering what they can do. There will be women sitting on verandas in the cities and towns in the summer, knitting socks, or maybe crocheting edges on handkerchiefs, who would gladly be raising potatoes and chickens if they knew how to begin; and a corresponding number of chickens and potatoes will go unraised. But the idea of coöperation is taking root, and here and there there is a breaking away from the conventional mode of life. The best thing about it is that people are thinking, and pretty soon the impact of public opinion will be so strong that there will be a national movement to bring together the idle people and the idle land. We are paying a high price for our tuition, but we must admit that the war is a great teacher.

There is a growing sentiment against the holding-up of tracts of land by speculators waiting for the increase in value which comes by the hard work of settlers. Every sod turned by the real, honest settler, who comes to make his home, increases the value of the section of land next him, probably held by a railway company, and the increase makes it harder for some other settler to buy it. By his industry the settler makes money for the railway company, but incidentally makes his own chance of acquiring a neighbor more remote!

The wild-lands tax which prevails in the western provinces of the Dominion, and which we hope will be increased, will make it unprofitable to hold land idle, and will do much, if made heavy enough, to liberate land for settlement.

As it is now, people who have no money to buy land have to go long distances from the railroad to get homesteads, and there suffer all the inconveniences and hardships and dangers of pioneer life, miles from neighbors, many miles from a doctor, and without school or church; while great tracts of splendid land lie idle and unimproved, close beside the little towns, held in the tight clasp of a hypothetical owner far away.

Western Canada has a land problem which war conditions have intensified. But people are beginning to talk of these things, and the next few years will see radical changes.

The coming of women into the political world should help. Women are born conservationists. Their first game is housekeeping and doll-mending. The doll, by preference, is a sick doll, and in need of care. Their work is to care for, work for something, and if the advent of women into politics does not mean that life is made easier and safer for other women and for children, then we will have to confess with shame and sorrow that politically we have failed! But we are not going to fail! Already the angel has come down and has troubled the water. Discussions are raging in women's societies and wherever women meet together, and out of it something will come. Men are always quite willing to be guided by women when their schemes are sound and sane.