Take an example, one only. Seager Wheeler lives north of Regina. How our hearts go out in sympathy to those people who suffer from nature's inhuman manifestation of her strength. (A reference to the Regina cyclone of the day before.) I have not learned to look up through nature's devastations to nature's God, but I have learned to look through human life to man's God,—Whose tender mercies are over all His other works. Seager Wheeler lives north of Regina. Out at the Experimental Farm, where we were on Saturday, Dr. Saunders, patiently, quietly, modestly, brought together a strain of wheat from Calcutta and a strain of wheat from the North-West. A new child is born unto us in Wheatland. Seager Wheeler gets some of that wheat and begins the process of selection on his own farm, "the best out of the best for the best." Last autumn I was in New York at the back-to-the-land exposition. A thousand dollar prize in gold was there for the man who would bring the best bushel of wheat from anywhere on the continent. The judges were expert men from the United States, and Seager Wheeler from the middle of our North-West plains won the thousand dollar prize for his bushel of wheat from that part of our land. More than that, I have a photograph of the plot from which this bushel of wheat was taken, and it measured up 80 2-3 bushels to the acre. No wonder we think well of our land, and you folks want to get some of it.
One other sentence only, otherwise I should be beguiled into talking far too long about our lands. In these days, dangerous in their clamors for bigness and swiftness and luxury, one needs to remind himself that satisfactions do not come from these things, but from honest labor whereby one conserves the strength and beauty of some part of nature and man, and develops power and joy in another unit of nature and man, making the earth and man rejoice together. Truly a nation's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things it possesseth.
On What We Are Doing
We in Canada are happy in the occupations of the people, as well as in the setting of our lives. What has occupation to do with conservation? Occupation conserves the best that humanity has achieved in human beings themselves. Not books? It would be a loss if all the books were taken from us,—it would be a loss somewhat modified by the advantages. But whosoever will offend one of these little ones in whom is conserved all the achievements and attainments of the race to this day, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck. The menace of books is that they sometimes crush down and crush out the aspiration of young life for joy in constructive, creative, co-operative labor, through merely selfish, silent reading for gratification. We are happy in the occupations of our people that minister to greatness in character. A new country like ours needs the constructing and conquering qualities, more than the sedentary, absorbing, remembering capacities. The farmer follows one of the conquering, constructive occupations, gathering wealth out of the otherwise chaos. His labor creates wealth and conserves the health and virility of the people. What a grudge I have against the modern factory that, in making things, debases men. I do my thinking aloud in a meeting like this. Therefore I do not flatter. I will warrant we should not have women, as I have seen them, working in factories, with poor air and little sunshine amid the infernal rattle of machinery, if we believed in our heart of hearts that things were for homes and that good homes for all the people was the dominant object of a strong nation. Why should I have cloth in my house because it is cheap—when it is transfused by the blood of women in Leeds? Why should I want a coat on my back that carries with it the stain of tears from children who have had no chance? Why should I walk easily in boots, factory-made in order that they may be a dollar a pair cheaper, when I have seen women atrophied by the monotonous poverty of their job who should have been mothering a family and nursing the aspirations of young people? We do not want to have things, things, things as our idols and our end in life.
The fundamental occupations which engage the large majority of our people are farming, making homes and teaching and training the young. The farm, the rural home and the rural school together provide the opportunities and means of culture in forms which children and grown people can turn into power—power of knowledge, of action and of character. Farming is much more than moving soil, sowing grain, destroying weeds and harvesting crops. It is taking care of part of the face of Mother Earth as a home for her children. Making homes is much more than building houses and providing furniture, food, clothing and things. It is creating a temple, not made with hands, as a place of culture for the Divine in us. Those who live by agriculture are not all of the earth earthy, and the rural home is a fine school for the soul. Teaching and training the young is much more than instructing children in the arts of reading, writing and reckoning—those flexible, useful tools of the intellect. Much of the time of the school has been consumed in these tasks; but now we come to a happier day when those arts can be acquired joyfully in less than a year and a half, instead of painfully, reluctantly and with difficulty as spread over six years. The main portion of the school time will soon be devoted to caring for the health, the habits and the standards of the pupils while watching and directing the development of their powers of body, mind and spirit.
These three fundamental mothering occupations in Canada nourish and sustain all the others, such as commerce, manufacturing, transportation and the professions. By means of them, followed as well as they can be by an educated and cultured people, the country will be kept prosperous and fertile. It can be made beautiful only by radiant homes, whence youth will go forth from generation to generation to refine life by their characters, to exalt it by their ideals and to improve its conditions by intelligent labor.
I must say a word or two as to whence we got the impetus, the stimulus, towards conservation. Intelligent, conscious, planned and organized effort for conservation came to us from Washington. We are the Washington of the North in more ways than one, and I think I express, if I may venture to do so, the hope and conviction of my friend Sir Wilfrid Laurier when I say that, a hundred years hence and less, the Washington of the North will be more than abreast of the Washington of the South because of the influence, the moulding influence, of climate and homes and schools such as we in this country will have. But the Washington of the South had a great gathering in 1908, when the Governors of all the States and others were assembled to consider conservation. I read the report of the proceedings with some care. Then I turned more than once to read, right after it, an old classic about a gathering in the time of King Ahasuerus, the gathering of the governors of 127 provinces. And I laid down the Bible with the conviction that that Ahasuerus assembly was no higher in its essence and in its fruits than a pow-wow debauch of Indian chiefs on the plains. Take the setting and the spirit of the Ahasuerus crowd—self-seeking, careless of human rights, neglectful of children's claims. That story was worth recording as a great exhibition of monstrous selfishness, the thing itself—worth avoiding, worth opposing, worth smiting to the death every time it rears its ugly greedy head. On the other hand, consider Washington. The governors of sovereign states come together, for what? Not to consider how they might enrich themselves at the expense of the weak and those in their care, but how they might conserve for all the people, the property of all the people, for the benefit of all the people, for the longest stretch of time. That was a great gathering. It will go down in history as marking a new epoch in human activity and endeavor. And whatever may be said amid the transient controversies of party politics, the name of Theodore Roosevelt will stand out illustrious for leadership in a new effort for conservation that saves, not merely forests and material resources, but that saves moral earnestness among the people. I have no sympathy, myself, with your own harsh criticism of these political conventions you are holding now in the States. Not being a politician, I can speak of politics without fear. May I tell you what my thinking has been? Perhaps only twice before did the United States ever get such service, such an awakening—when you had the struggle for liberty, and, afterwards, the war for freedom. What means the present commotion which bursts through conventional conventions of polite speech? Is it not that you shall be saved from a supine sense of satisfaction with having only things—from the loss of great concepts of justice and right aflame in moral earnestness? I rejoice with you that we are indebted to Washington for impetus and stimulus in moral earnestness regarding forests and other resources. That is Gifford Pinchot's contribution—not to make lumber cheap, but to make the land fertile and prosperous, that boys and girls may be beautiful and strong and glad. Worth while is the moral earnestness that uses materials only as the mechanism of its efforts for the improvement of life.
Then Canadians attended officially another meeting in Washington in 1909, came back and Parliament instituted a Commission of Conservation. That Commission has been at work for three years seeking to serve our people by showing how they could improve themselves as well as their circumstances through effort to conserve their resources.
On the Provincial experimental farm in Wellington County, Ont., Professor Zavitz works. He took thin, light grains from a variety of oats, and sowed those by themselves; and, from the same variety, he took plump, heavy, dark grains, and sowed these by themselves. For twelve years he followed that plan on the same soil, under the same climate, with the same management. At the end of twelve years the crop from this plump seed rose by twenty-six bushels more to the acre and ten and a half pounds more to the bushel than the crop from the poor seed. That was conservation secured by intelligent application and good management. You can do that with life as well as with seed and with land. The long distance aim as well as the local object of conservation is to make Canada a better country to live in and a more beautiful country to love; and to make Canadians a people of greater vigor, finer texture and nobler character.
On What We Are Seeking