CHAPTER XIV.

Poor-tax--Poor-houses undesirable--The tramp nuisance--A tramp’s story--Mistaken charity--Office seekers--Election incidents.

“The owlet loves the gloom of night, The lark salutes the day, The timid dove will coo at hand, But falcons soar away.”

The burdensome tax which the people of England pay for the support of the poor we know nothing of in Canada. True, we have a poor-rate, but it sits so lightly upon us we do not heed it very much. For example, in the rural township of East Whitby, in the county of Ontario, there is a population of three thousand. The township is assessed at one and one-half million dollars. Among these people an annual tax is levied of about $8,000; for the poor, $400 out of the total tax levied. There is no poor-house in this locality. The really deserving poor are given an allowance of money weekly for their maintenance--what would be called “out-door relief” in England. It is not to be supposed this sum is ample for all relief, but in this land of greatest abundance the people give and give liberally, and no further charge is made upon the authorities. Again, we take the ground that when food is cheap and fuel plentiful scarcely any should be so poor as to be unable to support themselves, where the opportunities have always been sufficient to enable all to earn enough from which to save a small competency. There are, of a truth, cases of unfortunate and honest poverty, and such we do not demur at relieving. Unfortunately, however, in Canada, as in the United States, people will congregate in towns and cities and be hard pressed to gain a livelihood, when they should be upon the farms in the country as tenants or as owners. It is not difficult to become the latter, for the Government of Ontario is supplying homesteads to all applicants on very easy terms. For the lazy, however, it is easier to walk about paved, electric-lighted streets, and drink water supplied by costly waterworks systems brought to their doors, than to work and clear the soil. Hence the assertion that there should be no tramps in Canada is not without tangible foundation.

It has been a mooted question in Canada whether we ought to erect county poor-houses for the care and provision of the poor and infirm, or leave such matters to the ordinary township councils to deal with. In a land of plenty like ours, where there is abundance of food and constant demand for work-people, there should be no need for such persons to become a charge upon the bounty of the public; and it is absolutely certain that if we erect poor-houses there will always be poor to fill them. Such a class of population will come to us, if not already here, and having provided a place for them in the erection of poor-houses, we shall never get rid of them.

There are, of course, objects of charity scattered throughout the country, but they bear an infinitesimal proportion to the whole population, and can be provided for at small cost to the local community. In a country where everyone who will can provide for an inclement season or against the needs of age and infirmity, it becomes a very serious question whether the hard-working and thrifty ought to be taxed to provide for the lazy and thriftless. Or again, is it wise to foster the growth of a class of persons whose filth and foul diseases are the result of laziness and their own vices? Charity rightly bestowed is the very essence of man’s best nature, but I do not think it charity to give indiscriminately to those asking alms.

The genus tramp has developed only lately among us. Prior to the American war no such stamp of man existed in Canada. To-day he is here, and apparently here to stay; but as there is no possible excuse for these fellows begging through the country, it is not charity to give them money or clothes, or even food. The following is a case in point:

An old fellow residing in Scarboro’, who owns a comfortable house and lot, leaves home in the spring, clothed in rags, for an all summer’s begging tour. He goes from house to house, and says he can make more by it than he can by working. From the result of his summer’s begging he can and does live in comfort during the winter at home. And those who give to that man do a positive harm to our country by encouraging vagrancy.

Last winter a clergyman wrote me from the neighborhood of Peterboro’, saying that a colored man who was begging about the country from door to door had exhibited a paper declaring him to be a worthy object of charity, and purporting to have my name attached as a guarantee of good faith. This generous and gentlemanly clergyman wrote me that he had his doubts about the genuineness of the man’s need, for he found he had been drunk. By telegram I repudiated the man and his paper, and asked for his arrest. Persons who gave to that man committed an injury to our country, and not an act of charity. I am only mentioning this case as an illustration. Perhaps a good many of us may not yet know or realize the fact that many tramps in our Province are using the names of prominent or well-known citizens to help them to defraud the public. It is just as well for gentlemen to know, if their names have been brought considerably before the public, that in many instances these are used without their knowledge by tramps to further their impostures. Tramps have indeed called upon me, exhibiting what purported to be “a recommend” signed by one or more of Toronto’s prominent citizens, when I knew at a glance that such signatures were forgeries. The proper plan would be to have them arrested, but no one individual wants to fight the battles for the general public, and usually these fellows get off.

From the last tramp who honored me with a call I wormed out his story. He was a strong, hearty, broad-shouldered young man of twenty-eight or so, born in Ontario, the son of assisted immigrants. During the past summer he had worked for a couple of months in a brickyard near Toronto. His wages were $1.50 per day, but the proprietor, according to his rules, kept back one-third until the end of the season, when this, too, would be paid in a lump sum along with the last week’s pay. “But I could not stand that, you know,” the tramp said. He must have his money, all of it weekly, or quit. And quit he did, for he could not subsist on the single dollar a day and buy his whiskey! Until the following winter he simply “bummed” around the city, spending the balance of his brickyard money. As winter came on he made his way to Ottawa and Pembroke--just how did not appear quite clear. He worked about Pembroke in the lumber woods for a couple of months; was discharged because he would not be driven by the gang boss nor be ordered to keep up; bought a C.P.R. ticket for Toronto, but before setting out must have a few drinks. Took a few glasses, and then a few more, and fell into oblivion. Next morning he awoke in a hotel stable, minus his railway ticket and $25 which he had in his pocket, and then he had no resource but to tramp it back to Toronto. He had no difficulty, for any of the farmers would feed him and keep him overnight, so that it was just a question of slow marching with him from house to house, with a full stomach and a stop whenever cold. But as he got nearer Toronto he found the farmers not so hospitable; they refused generally to feed him, and invariably declined to lodge him. He said those near Toronto had been called upon by so many tramps that they had become wise, and no longer considered it charity to give to tramps. In a small village near Toronto, overtaken by night, he could find no refuge, and had to apply to the village constable to be confined in the ordinary lock-up. In this he was accommodated. But the constable did not relish the idea of sitting up all night for any such specimen of humanity, and so left him alone in the lock-up, where there was a stove and supply of wood. The night was cold, and the tramp fired up himself. On leaving him the constable had cautioned him to be careful of fire, and the tramp said that he was only careful for fear that he might get burnt himself. The lock-up stood beside other buildings, and had he set it on fire a good part of the village must have been consumed. Thus was this village placed in great jeopardy on account of this worthless fellow who became a charge upon them for the night, and the whole community thereabout was in great danger of losing many thousands of dollars worth of property, and possibly precious human life, by this wretched scamp, who was too lazy to work in summer and too fond of whiskey to keep him off the road in winter. Now if there be any charity in giving to such persons, I fail to see it. If we construct county poor-houses just such fellows will want to get into them. There is no excuse for any such persons. In the summer they can easily earn sufficient money to keep them during the winter if they will. In this tramp’s case he could have earned good money in the winter if he chose. He said he would get on to Toronto, and if nothing turned up he would go on west towards Woodstock and about Berlin, for the tramping fraternity told him that the German farmers thereabout have big barns and cellars and great abundance, and feed all tramps. In case they would not feed or lodge him readily, he said most of those about Berlin possessed stone base stables, which were always warm, and that he could sleep as warm in them as he could in the house.

Here is a great danger--greater in fact than the risk which the people ran when the tramp was in the village lock-up all by himself with a red-hot stove. During the summer these idle vagabonds go about the country in twos and threes, and camp at night in barns and stacks. No one ever saw a tramp yet who did not smoke. Lodging in a barn or stack is to him no valid reason why he should not indulge in his pipe. Consequently, many barns are burned throughout our country, and the only explanation ever given for such fires is simply “tramps.” This tramp nuisance is one of the growing evils in our Province, and it is just as well to stamp it out now, before it gets greater, by absolutely refusing to give aid. If we build county poor-houses, our poor-rates will go up, and no one ever heard of such rates coming down if once put on. The British farmer to-day is ground down with poor-rates, but perhaps in densely populated England there may be an excuse for such rates. With us there is not, then let us not have them. Giving to tramps is fostering a lazy, whiskey-drinking, shiftless class, who beg because it is easier than to work. Indiscriminate giving is worse than not giving at all. Let us generally, throughout rural Ontario, take warning and look closely to our charities, and see that they are rightly bestowed. Let us stamp out this tramp nuisance before it becomes fixed. If there be worthy objects of charity in our midst, I know I am safe in asserting that the big hearts of Canadians will relieve them, and there is always the township council to fall back upon in any event.

There is another class of persons in Canada who are always in search of “the loaves and fishes” in the shape of public offices. At first sight these persons would not appear to be numerous, but there are a very great many of them in various capacities--many offices, no doubt, created for the men, and many of them, too, of no adequate good to the community. As a class these persons will bear well a comparison with the turtle--opening their eyes and sitting in the sun, Micawber-like, “waiting for something to turn up.” Our labors to bring our young country to the fore they do not share in. They “toil not, neither do they spin,” notwithstanding they are always well arrayed. Manifestly a certain number of public servants are necessary, but the general feeling is that there are two where one would be enough. More, when these public servants once get foisted upon us we can never get rid of them. “Superannuated” is the political term; but they get pay until the grave opens for them.

AFTER THE OFFICES.

Whatever other faults Canadians may have, they are certainly willing, with all possible alacrity, to serve their countrymen in the way of filling offices, small or more important, throughout the country. At the time of the municipal elections the aspirants for municipal honors come to the front in shoals. This particular feature of our people is, in a way, highly commendable. And yet one cannot cease to wonder at the immense number of persons in any community in Canada who are willing to sacrifice (?) themselves for the public good (?).

It is held by patriots and sages that it is a citizen’s duty to serve the public wherever his services are required, whether it be in the tented field or in the civic chair. So far as the matter of the civic chair is concerned, many of us--and the writer among the number--are quite content to let those who are so supremely anxious to serve their fellows have the offices as long as they can fulfil the duties fairly well.

Unquestionably, the public have a right to the individual’s services, but until the public really need them I hold it not to be a real neglect of one’s duty to let those who are so very anxious to serve do so, so long as they serve well and without public pay. The public will seek out the individual if they really require his aid. When Rome was in her palmiest days Cincinnatus was made consul, and received all the honors the Roman people could confer upon him. When his consulship had expired he retired to his farm beyond the Tiber, and went to cultivating the soil with his own hands. About 458 B.C., while engaged, it is said, ploughing in his field, five horsemen galloped up and informed him that he had been elected Dictator of that mighty empire republic--Rome. He left his plough and put on once more the royal purple.

George Washington, upon resigning his commission to Congress at the close of the war of the Revolution, retired to his lands at Mount Vernon on the Potomac, and is credited with having said, “I’d rather be among my fields at Mount Vernon than be emperor of the world.”

As might be supposed, there are often curious incidents and characters which appear in this connection. We have scarcely a county--I had almost said township--in which there is not the history of some one or other eventful election or polling day.

All sorts of objections are raised to throw doubt upon the suitability of each candidate by his opponent in politics or rival in local popularity, each side waxing eloquent in favor of its own man, or even resorting to means that are in some degree beyond the limits of wit or repartee to confound the tactics of the opposition candidate. In a recent contest a meeting called in the interests of one side by invitation cards was packed by their opponents through the medium of a card, a fac-simile in all except the hour, which, being a few minutes earlier than the _bona fide_ invitation enabled the holders to secure the seats in advance and in good order. The old-time stories of two-thirds of the “free and independent electors” going to the poll on crutches that later they might be used as shillelahs, with broken heads as the result, are not more absurd than some of the stories of incidents in the back-country contests for municipal honors at the present time.

A candidate during recent municipal elections had been charged with religious unbelief, and consequent unfitness for the office. He was a farmer who owned and cultivated his one hundred acres--worth, perhaps, farm and stock, about $11,000. During his younger days, when sowing his wild oats, he had strayed from home and had been a sailor before the mast on our great lakes, and had thus mixed considerably more than his fellow farmers with the outside world. When on the rostrum, making his speech, urging the people to vote for him as councillor, he was dressed in a Canada pepper-and-salt tweed suit, shooting coat, with large lapels to his pockets overhanging them, a red scarf about his neck, and a pair of thick cowhide boots, the tops of which were too large, with the legs of his trousers stretched tightly over them. His _tout ensemble_ would denote a good plain, practical farmer, in fair circumstances, and having a mediocre amount of brain power or gift of penetration. Once getting upon the rostrum his speech ran on about thus:--“Gentlemen, I am accused as not believing the Bible. I tell you that ain’t so, for I believe the Bible as well as you do. There are some verses in the Bible I do not quite believe, for I don’t believe Jonah was three days in the whale’s belly, and that he would come out alive. Well, I don’t believe that Samson set 3,000 foxes’ tails on fire, and set fire to green wheat. The rest of the Bible I believe, and I think you ought to elect me. Gentlemen, I ask for your votes,” and with this brief address he bowed and left the platform. A hum was heard about the room, the general conclusion being that his explanation was worse than the charge; that he did not better it any, and would have done as well to have said nothing. It would be almost superfluous to add that this novel candidate was defeated, and, so far as I can learn, in Ontario at least, never before was religious belief made a test of fitness for municipal office.

Another candidate comes before my mind who wanted to sacrifice himself on the altar of his country by filling some civic office. He had, it seems, been jocularly accused by someone with being a clodhopper and not sharp enough for a councillor. For the first time in his life he mounted the rostrum, and eager as he was to speak when among the crowd, up there it was quite another affair. A great big, hulking fellow he was, who had just attained his majority, and whose father had set him up on a hundred-acre farm. Never since his youthful days, when he recited at the common school--

“On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,”

with all the declamation the piece could possibly stand, had he stood up before the public. He chokes, makes a squeak, tries it again, swallows rapidly, and after a most painful suspense of a minute or so gets out: “Gentlemen, I am a clodhopper, and I’m not ashamed to own it. But I am fit for the office of councillor, and if you will vote for me I will serve you well and faithfully. I promise you I will keep down expenditures, and I will do my best to look after the roads and bridges. Gentlemen, I ask for your votes.” And he gets off that rostrum as quickly as if he were standing on hot coals. He is in a profuse glow of perspiration, feeling down in his heart, “What a fool I made of myself.” This time the religious belief was all right, and he got in.

In our towns and cities throughout Ontario, nearly seven out of every ten men are looking for municipal offices. Let one attend a town nomination and he will find as many as ten applicants for every single office, and the mutual recriminations which these would-be-immortalized townsmen make upon one another are to the listener, to say the least, rather disgraceful and disgusting. It is a fact that very ordinary persons in our towns and villages--men of very moderate ability or means--will come as near calling their fellow-townsmen liars as they dare go, and all for the sake of sitting at a council board for one year. Let the roads in that town, for instance, be pretty bad during an open winter, and one may hear such municipal councillors holding an open-air meeting of the council, and it is quite refreshing to find that every single one of that devoted council is responsible for the bad streets of the town. To get municipal honors in towns it may be necessary to act in this way, but then I am pleased to think there are some few persons in every community who are content to jog on through life and do without such honors, and who do not find it necessary to call their fellows liars. It is said the real safeguard for the liberty of the English-speaking people is the town meeting. If that be so, our liberties in Canada are fully assured.