I cannot help regarding industrial war in this new world, rather as an
importation than as a native growth. The spirit of it is brought over by
British workmen, who have been fighting the master class in their former
home. In old England, the land of class distinctions, the masters are a
class, economically as well as socially, and they are closely allied
with a political class, which till lately engrossed power and made laws
in the interest of the employer. Seldom does a man in England rise from
the ranks, and when he does, his position in an aristocratic society is
equivocal, and he never feels perfectly at home. Caste runs from the
peerage all down the social scale. The bulk of the land has been
engrossed by wealthy families, and the comfort and dignity of freehold
proprietorship are rarely attainable by any but the rich. Everything
down to the railway carriages, is regulated by aristocracy; street cars
cannot run because they would interfere with carriages, a city cannot be
drained because a park is in the way. The labourer has to bear a heavy
load of taxation, laid on by the class wars of former days. In this new
world of ours, the heel taps of old-world flunkeyism are sometimes
poured upon us, no doubt; as, on the other hand, we feel the reaction
from the old-world servility in a rudeness of self assertion on the part
of the democracy which is sometimes rather discomposing, and which we
should be glad to see exchanged for the courtesy of settled self-
respect. But on the whole, class distinctions are very faint. Half,
perhaps two-thirds, of the rich men you meet here have risen from the
ranks, and they are socially quite on a level with the rest. Everything
is really open to industry. Every man can at once invest his savings in
a freehold. Everything is arranged for the convenience of the masses.
Political power is completely in the hands of the people. There are no
fiscal legacies of an oligarchic past. If I were one of our emigration
agents, I should not dwell so much on wages, which in fact are being
rapidly equalized, as on what wages will buy in Canada--the general
improvement of condition, the brighter hopes, the better social
position, the enlarged share of all the benefits which the community
affords. I should show that we have made a step here at all events
towards being a community indeed. In such a land I can see that there
may still be need of occasional combinations among the working men to
make better bargains with their employers, but I can see no need for the
perpetual arraying of class against class or for a standing apparatus of
industrial war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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