“We are too apt to regard social phenomena as if they are entities in themselves, instead of incidents in the development of society, a fact which a man who is amidst the strife of existing social and economic conditions should not lose sight of.”
“I am continually impressed with the wisdom of keeping a mind open to suggestion and impressions from the men one meets in the ordinary course of life, in fine, the importance of keeping an open mind. If one can accomplish this, even the din of ‘the world’s most crowded streets’ becomes interesting and instructive, even beautiful, because of the opportunities of seeing truth and discovering the remedy for evils.”
“Justice and truth must prevail over tyranny and ignorance.”
The true mind is revealed in its unconscious moments, and it is, therefore, from passages like these, casually expressed, and constantly recurring in much that he wrote, which was of a private nature, that his real views and beliefs are to be gathered. One or two other passages in a similar vein will disclose these views more fully.
During Christmas week of 1900 he visited New York for the first time. Of the many impressions made upon his mind, the contrasts of wealth and poverty, and all that they implied, were to him more real than aught else.
“What was particularly irritating to me,” he writes in his journal, after returning from this trip, “was the constant evidence of the power of money rule in that throbbing metropolis. The story is written, even on the store signs on Broadway, that this, the greatest commercial city in America, is practically owned by monied persons, whose tastes and ambitions strike one as being essentially low, mean and vulgar. I felt strongly a growing pride in British institutions and British character compared with what I saw about me. The ground taken by Mr. Mulock, on behalf of labour, came strongly before me. I felt that selfishness must be reckoned with in the solution of social problems. What is to be hoped is that strong men may be brought to see that right legislation is good politics, that they may thus be persuaded to lend their aid to those who hope to avoid the growth in Canada of a corrupt system by which the power is in the hands of the octopus who owns the money bags, and who fattens on the blood of the people whom he crowds under him. There is luxury and magnificence on Fifth Avenue, but I envied not the proud possessors of those costly mansions. I want naught but what my own ability and effort will bring me. I believe in making one’s surroundings as beautiful as may be, but I feel that there is much waste and vulgar display in the way in which wealthy New York arrays herself. Her luxury is ponderous and heavy and dull, when one remembers that much of it rests on the necks of the hundreds of thousands of toilers who gasp for breath in the narrow streets, from whom are withheld God’s free gifts, the sunlight and the pure air.”
Elsewhere, he writes after a walk through the city streets: