This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on April 8, 1939.
I met the throng coming out of a meeting in the Château Laurier in Ottawa just now, a serious-faced company of women, alert, intelligent and puzzled. I overheard their comments, as they passed me.
“It was a wonderful speech,” one woman said, “but it left us dangling … we know there is something wrong … Everyone knows that … But how are we to begin to set it right? He did not tell us one practical thing … I want to do something!”
I know the sort of speech they have been listening to. Eloquent, and obvious. Full of beautiful phrases, but nothing on which anyone could bite. The sort of speech that Anatole France describes as “filled with a foamy eloquence, which glides but does not penetrate.”
In contrast to this type of sterile eloquence, I recalled what a woman in Virden, Man., said to me, when I was there last week. We were speaking of the Youth Training School, which is being held there, and the many ways the people of Virden have helped the 37 students from the country round about. Many have opened their homes and given meals.
The woman to whom I was speaking said: “I had no room that I could give, but on Saturday I wash and iron shirts for two of the boys. It helps them, and it makes me feel I am doing something which is real.”
Seeing how the town of Virden and other places are contributing to the success of the schools encourages the belief that there is one great resource in Canada that has been scarcely touched.
The Youth Training Schools have been going on since 1937 across Canada, very quietly, but efficiently. About 55,000 young unemployed have gone through them, and been taught various trades and crafts, in addition to the general English subjects. The object of the school is to prepare young people for positions. About 22 per cent of the students have found employment, as a direct result of their training.
This is a good start. Some of the incidental results are even more valuable. In many of the places where schools are set up, the people have shown a fine spirit of co-operation. No boy or girl was denied the training for lack of funds. Virden is a good example.
I knew that Virden would rise up and be generous. One look at this beautiful little town with its tree-shaded streets and lovely gardens reveals the character of its people. Even in winter, it had a home-like welcoming look. The houses are not crowded together.
More homes were offered in Virden than were needed, and the school became a real community project. These schools are set up by the dominion and provincial governments, who share the expense. Two directors are supplied by the provincial government.
In addition to the regular instruction, given by two men who are graduates of the University of Manitoba, the people of Virden have done something for the young students. A bank manager has given them a course in finance. One of the ministers has given lessons in public speaking. Expert machinists have demonstrated farm machinery and shown how repairs can be made with ordinary tools. Lessons in butter-making have been given at the creamery. The flour mill has shown how wheat is ground into flour.
In addition to all these practical aids to farming, the cultural side of life has not been forgotten, for lessons in English, history, social usage and business correspondence have been given.
One student summed it up: “We’ve learned a lot,” he said. “Not only about farming, but about living. I see the farm in a new way. It is more than just a place to work; it is a place to live. A farmer can be a nation-builder. I’ve just been someone’s hired man since I was able to hold a plow. Now I want a farm of my own.”
The Youth Training Schools were begun primarily as a remedy for unemployment, and they are succeeding, but there is a byproduct that surprises even the directors. It is the spontaneous reaction of the people: their generous help and co-operation, which has opened a door. This is the natural resource that has not yet been mined.
Now an ordinary work camp, where unemployed men live and work, is not a cheerful place, even though they are comfortably housed and well-fed. The unemployed, even under these conditions, feel themselves men set apart from their fellow men. Between them and the normal life of men there is a gulf fixed. Who can wonder that in their hearts are the smouldering embers of discontent and rebellion?
I thought of this when I spoke to 100 men in a camp on Vancouver Island last February. As camps go, it is one of the best, and the men are fine specimens of Canadian youth. But there was a sadness in their faces.
They told me in a week they would be out of camp looking for work again, while another 100 would come in, and go on with the road they have been building. Again, they will be ringing doorbells! They will have a little money, but no plan, no security.
They are pathetically brave, but I could see the spectre of fear in their eyes. One man, a young Swiss, can speak seven languages.
“I still have hope,” he said with a wan smile, “of being an interpreter. In the meantime, I have been grateful for this shelter.”
The ideal camp might well be a place where work, play and instruction could be combined and where other people besides the unemployed would come. There are roads to be built in Canada. One often wonders after driving over the wide American highways, well made and kept, why so many American motorists come to us.
Our roads are poor in comparison.
We need a great program of road-building. Better roads will mean more tourists, and increased tourist travel brings money, as well as other advantages.
The highways could be made beautiful with trees and flowers. I heard a fellow traveller tell about the highways in New Hampshire where they have made the boulevards so beautiful the drivers slow down to enjoy their grace and colour. We could make our mountain roads as lovely as the roads in Switzerland, where thrift and tidiness delight the eye. Every building painted, every little corner growing flowers, not a weed, not a sign of neglect.
I think of the waste wood, which litters our roadsides in the mountains, rotting uselessly. Tons and tons of fuel! I think of the prairies where wood is wealth, where men draw it from long distances. Could not this wood be gathered, cut and shipped to places where fuel is needed? Surely there is work for human hands here.
Then some of the ambitious towns and cities could employ men to lay out parks and gardens. Wood lots could be planted with seedlings, as a certain mayor of San Francisco once gave work to his unemployed, and now these trees are a national asset. We could find work projects, if we seriously set ourselves to the problem.
The remaining hours of the day at the camp could be given to play and instruction when the young people would recapture what the lean years have robbed them of — their love of fun, their humanness, their creative imagination.
Such a camp might be a place where young men could go for a holiday. People often complain to me that they would like their boys to work in the summer. They say there are no chores to do in these electrically equipped houses. No ashes to carry out, no wood-box to fill, and their boys are soft-muscled and indolent.
They wish there was some place where they could learn to work, and feel the dignity and joy of labour. They speak of Hitler, and how he has mobilized German youth by setting them to hiking, marching and mountain-climbing, all for the Fatherland.
Are we less patriotic? We, who have so much to live and work for?
We have made a start. Now all we need is more people who have the vision of a new Canada. People who know unemployment is not a problem, but a sin, a sin of selfishness. We let it develop because we are selfish. We can cure it by being unselfish.
We do not need new parties in Canada. We need new people; which is to say, new hearts. And a new willingness to serve, just where we are.
