Even more striking, but less within the scope of this brief survey, were the changes in the life and thought, in the manners and the social texture of the nation. The growth of luxury and of restless change; the quickening pace of business and the accompanying shortening of the work-day and the work-week; the transformation effected by railway {324} and steamship, by telephone and typewriter, by electric light and skyscraper; the coming of the motor-car, of bridge, and of society columns; the passing of cricket, the rise and fall of lacrosse, the triumph of baseball and hockey and golf and bowling, the professionalizing of nearly all sport; the increasing share of women in industry and education; the constant shift of fashion, the waxing and waning of hats and skirts; the readjustment of theological creeds and the trend towards church unity; the progress of medical science, the widening of university interests, the development of advertising and the transformation of the newspaper;--all these and many more phases of the changing times bulked larger in the daily life of the people than the constitutional and political issues with which statesmen and politicians had to deal and which historians have to describe. Even in the political and economic change no man and no party had a dominating share. The Canada of to-day is the creation of millions of hands, of the known or unknown few who toiled primarily for their country's advancement, and of the many who sought their own private ends and made national progress as a by-product. Yet if statesmen {325} are, on the one hand, not directly responsible for good harvests or bad, on the other, they are not 'flies on the wheel.' The powers confided to them are great for good or ill. They may hasten or retard material progress, and guide, if they cannot create, the current of national destiny. It is impossible to imagine what different course the Dominion would have taken had there been no Macdonald and no Laurier at the helm. In Sir Wilfrid Laurier's career four guiding principles, four goals of endeavour, have been steadily kept in view--individual liberty, collective prosperity, racial and religious harmony, and growth to nationhood. The end in view was not always reached. The path followed was not as ruler-straight as the philosopher or the critic would have prescribed. The leader of a party of many shades of opinion, the ruler of a country of widely different interests and prejudices and traditions, must often do not what is ideally best but what is the most practicable approach to the ideal. Yet with rare consistency and steadfast courage these ends were held in view. Ever an opportunist as to means, Wilfrid Laurier has never been an opportunist as to ends. {326}