APPENDIX
[The following speech was delivered to the Canadian Club, in the
Russell House, Ottawa, in March 1905, when Sir Rider Haggard (at
that time Mr. H. Rider Haggard) was in Canada as Commissioner
appointed by the Colonial Office. His instructions were to visit
and report on Labour Colonies established in the U.S.A. by the
Salvation Army. After inspecting them he was to proceed to Ottawa
and discuss the subject with Earl Grey, then Governor-General of
Canada.
Sir Rider wished this speech to be inserted as an appendix to "The
Days of My Life," as it gives the essence of his views on the
subject of the settlement of the surplus town population of Great
Britain on the unoccupied land of the empire, a subject to which
he devoted so much time and energy.
Commander Booth Tucker, of the Salvation Army, was with Sir Rider
on this occasion, and also spoke. There was a record attendance of
members of the Canadian Club, Mr. W. L. Mackenzie King (Prime
Minister of the Dominion in June 1926) being in the Chair.--Ed.]
I will begin by making a confession. The other day I had the honour of
addressing the branch of your society in Toronto, and there, for one
solid half-hour, did I inflict myself upon them. I began to wonder how
much they would stand. Well, I sat down and thought they must bless me
for doing so. The next day I saw some of the newspapers, including one
which stated that your humble servant had made what they were pleased
to call a very interesting but exceedingly brief address. I thought to
myself: If this is called brief in Toronto, I wonder what is long. I
took a few opinions on the point. I asked why they called a speech of
that length a brief one. My friend's answer was that it had to do with
your parliamentary institutions. He told me that it was quite common
in your House of Commons throughout the country, for speeches to run
from two to three hours, and therefore that is the standard and model
of time by which addresses are judged.
Now, gentleman, I say to you at once that, high as might be that
honour and greatly as I should desire it in any other circumstances, I
feel that I should never be competent to be a member of a House of
Commons of which this is true. Gentlemen, your president has made some
very kind allusions to me and to my rather--what shall I call it?--
varied career. He has spoken, for instance, of Africa. Well,
gentlemen, it is true I began my life as a public servant in Africa,
and many wonderful things I saw there.
I was in at the beginning, so to speak, of all the history we are
living through to-day. I was with Sir Theophilus Shepstone when we
annexed the Transvaal; as your president says, I had the honour of
hoisting the flag of England over it. Gentlemen, I lived, too, to see
the flag pulled down and buried. And I tell you this--and you, as
colonists as I was, will sympathise with me--it was the bitterest hour
of my life. Never can any of you in this room realise the scene I
witnessed upon the market-square of Newcastle when the news of the
surrender of Majuba reached us. It was a strange scene, it was an
awful scene. There was a mob of about 5,000 men, many of them loyal
Boers, many Englishmen, soldiers even, who had broken from the ranks--
and they marched up and down raving, yet weeping like children--and
swearing that whatever they were they were no longer Englishmen.
That is what I went through in those days; and I only mention it to
tell you how I came to leave South Africa. For I agreed that it was no
longer a place for an Englishman. Still, time goes on, the wheels
swing full circle, things change. I remember that after that I wrote a
book. It was a history. And in that book I went so far as to say--I
remember it well, and there it stands in black and white to be read--
that unless some change occurred, unless more wisdom, more patriotism
and a different system altogether prevailed in African affairs, the
result would be a war which would tax the entire resources of the
British Empire. Gentlemen, have we not had that war? And at that time
what did they say? They laughed at me, an unknown young man. And,
years later, when the war was on, they dug up the book and printed
these paragraphs and said, "Dear me, what a remarkable prophecy!"
Three men were right: Sir Bartle Frere was right, and they disgraced
him; my old chief, Sir Theophilus Shepstone, was right, and they
disgraced him; and even I, humble as I was, was right, and they mocked
at me. We know the end.
Thus my residential and official connection with South Africa came to
an end--I would not stop there any longer. I came home and went to the
bar, where I had fair prospects. And then a sad thing happened to me--
I wrote a successful book.
I do not know whether to be sorry or glad that I wrote it. Other
things might not have happened; and, after all, as Job the Patriarch
says: "Man knoweth not his own way." You go as destiny drives you. So
it was, gentlemen, I took to fiction. Having begun, I had to go on.
And, after all, there is something to be said for it. After all, it is
not a bad thing to have given pleasure and amusement to many who are
weary or sick, and, perhaps, some instruction also. You might do worse
than to write a good novel. Not that I for a moment wish to state that
all of mine are good.
Of course, the time comes to every writer, I suppose, when he has an
inspiration and does something which he knows to be better than he
ever did before. Perhaps he sees a little higher up into heaven
perhaps he sees a little lower down into--the other depths; and he
creates something and knows that that thing which he has created will
live, and that it will even go glittering down the generations. He
knows, perhaps, that he has cut his name fairly deep upon the iron
leaves of the Book of Time, which are so hard to mark. Perhaps he
knows that, and for a little while he is content. Not for long--no
artist, I think, is ever contented for long with what he has done. But
he thinks: "At least, I have done something."
Then, perhaps, he begins to understand--it comes into his mind--that
that was not his real inspiration. Not in these gauds of the
imagination, these sparkling things, these plays of fancy or of
eloquence or wit, was the real inspiration to be found. He turns and
wonders where it is. And he turns, let us say, and looks at the dull
masses of misery that pervade the globe, he looks and wonders, and he
thinks: Is there nothing that I, humble as I am, can do to help to
alleviate that misery, to lift up those who are fallen, to lift them
up for their own good and for the good of the world? And then,
gentlemen, he knows that that, not the gaudy, exciting work is the
real inspiration of his life.
And, perhaps, he turns and tries to match his own single strength
against the prejudices of generations, and tries to get men to think
as he does, tries to show them where the evil lies and where, too,
lies the remedy. Gentlemen, I have spoken, as it were, in allegory.
And yet these things have some application, certainly in my humble
case they have some application. Years ago, I saw what I described to
you; I saw the evils with which, since then, I have attempted to cope.
I recognised that it was my duty to cope with them if I could.
It is a hard task, gentlemen. It is a hard thing, in the first place,
to live down the reputation of being a writer of fiction--to surmount
the enormous barrier of prejudice that lies across one's path. And it
is not for years, perhaps, that people will begin to listen and will
begin to understand that to most men's minds there are two sides.
Still, humbly, imperfectly, I did attempt it. I have not done much.
Yet I have done something. They listen to me now a bit. If they had
not listened to me I should not be here in my present position to-day
as a Commissioner from the Government of Great Britain.
Well, what is it; what is this problem that moved me? I will tell you
in a few words. I perceived and realised the enormous change that is
coming over the Western world; how those, who for countless
generations, dwelt upon the land, are deserting the land and crowding
into the cities. I studied the reasons for this. For two years I
studied them, going through England, village by village, county by
county, town by town. And I found out what they were. In England the
chief cause was lack of prospect on the land. We are cramped in
England with the remains of a feudal system which works nothing but
ill; and under that system it is so that no man on the land seems to
have a chance to rise. The labourer on the land, say at two-and-
twenty, is earning as high a wage as he can ever hope to earn.
I ask you, gentlemen, how should any of us like to know that at two-
and-twenty we were doing the best we could hope to do in life? That is
the lot of the labourer on the land. All that he has to look forward
to at the end of his long career of forty or fifty years of toil is
probably a place in the workhouse. Is that an attractive prospect?
Then, no doubt, the spread of education, the facilities of travel, and
other things of that kind conduce to the immigration into the cities,
and this movement goes on with ever-increasing rapidity.
At the present moment in England, I believe we have but one-seventh of
our population living on the land. In the United States, if the
figures given me are correct, matters are very little better. And so
it is in other countries--everywhere the land dwellers heap themselves
into the cities. And what happens to them when they get there? How
many succeed? Not one in five, I say. The rest of them, for the most
part, get nothing. If sickness strikes a man, when he arises from his
bed his place is gone. His children grow ill through crowding together
in narrow courts and unsanitary rooms, and become decimated by
disease. Bad times come and the workmen are dismissed by the thousand
from their employ. Grey hairs, at any rate, come at last, and with
grey hairs the notice to quit; and so they go down, and they go under
and become part of that mass which is known as the submerged tenth--
though I imagine there is a good deal more than a tenth. And there
they are--miseries to themselves, useless to their country, and a
burden upon the town that has to support them.
Gentlemen, if you think I exaggerate, ask Commissioner Booth Tucker,
and he will tell you. He will tell you, he who knows, as one of the
heads of the great organisation that is to-day dealing with this class
of people. He will tell you how many children they have to feed in the
morning in the big cities in order that they may go to school, how
many dock labourers they have to feed, and so on. He can tell you
tales you will scarcely believe of the suffering--the horrible
suffering, the inconceivable misery of these great cities which the
foolish peoples of the earth rush into to dwell there.
Now, that is what is going on in the great city. Let us look at the
other side of the question. Let us go to places like Fort Amity, where
I saw the Colony of the Salvation Army. As your president told you, I
am not at liberty to forestall my report in any way; but I can say
this--that there I went to the schools, as I did in other places, and
saw the children. The parents of these Fort Amity children were taken
from a great city, the city of Chicago, where mostly they were working
as day labourers. They came with nothing; in fact, it was necessary to
pay the fares of most of them. They had no prospects, nothing earned,
nothing to hope for. If we could get at the facts, no doubt we should
find they lived in one or two rooms, and not too well. I went and
looked at these children. My daughter photographed them in the schools
at Fort Amity. Never did you see a healthier, happier, more robust,
more promising set of children in your life. And I wondered how these
children would have looked had not the Salvation Army had the idea of
starting this Colony and had they been left to wander about in the
streets of Chicago. And I wondered also, gentlemen, how many of these
faces--these happy, contented faces--would have been wanting, but for
the change made in the condition of these children.
But you may be political economists, some of you, and we all know that
political economy is a hard doctrine. And you may say: Well, these
people went to the cities of their own accord; let them expiate their
fault in the city; let them welter and let them perish there, dead
beats, and the world is well rid of them. Well, I am going to submit,
if you will allow me, another side of the argument for your
consideration. If you do not want to do anything on the ground of
humanitarianism to help the people, I submit to you, gentlemen, and I
submit to everyone, that there is another ground on which the thing
should be done; and that is the ground of the welfare of the nation.
I will start out with an axiom. If the Western nations allow this sort
of thing to go on, allow their population to crowd into the cities,
then, I say, the career of the Western nations is going to be short.
The city folk, those who remain, will never hold their own in the
world--not only because of the weakened physique and changed
character, but because of another and more final reason. Gentlemen,
children are not bred in the cities. There will come a time when the
children bred there are too few--it is coming now. And if the children
are not bred, if there is not the supply of healthy children to carry
on the nation, how can the nation stand? With the people on the land
it is different. Self-interest comes into play.
A large family is a valuable asset to the small-holder; in the city it
is nothing but a drawback. Let any one of you gentlemen think of
himself with a home consisting of a single room in a tenement in New
York or a back slum in London, and with six or eight children; and
then think of the contrast with those six children upon the land and
able to assist in your business of caring for the cattle or carrying
on many of the other operations of the farm. We must look at facts.
With dwellers on the land self-interest comes in; on the land alone
will the supply of children be available that is necessary to carrying
on our white races. And if they are not carried on in sufficient
numbers what of it? Of course, you have all heard of what they call
the yellow peril, and many people have laughed at it as a bogey. Is it
a bogey? Does Russia, for instance, consider that Japan is a mere
nightmare? I think not; I think Russia has very definite and distinct
ideas as to the prowess of Japan to-day. Japan is a small nation.
Forty years ago the Japanese dressed themselves up in scale armour,
like lobsters, and fought with bows and arrows. And look at them
to-day, knocking Russia around the ring.
Imagine the state of affairs when, not little Japan, but, let us say,
great China, with her 400,000,000 people, has also made some strides
towards civilisation, has carried out, for instance, that programme
which I saw announced in the papers yesterday, in the way of building
warships; and imagine those 400,000,000 of stolid, strong, patient,
untiring land-bred men having nowhere to live, having not earth upon
which to stand, and seeking a home. And imagine them casting their
eyes around for worlds to conquer, and seeing an island continent half
vacant and other places with a few families scattered over the land,
and a few millions heaped together in the things these white people
call cities.
Imagine them saying, God--whatever gods there be, whatever gods we
worship--give us the right to live; we have the right to our share of
the earth; here we have not enough of the earth; we will seek the
earth; we will take the earth; we will keep the earth. Then imagine
the scanty peoples spread thinly over these territories saying: "But
we will pass a law to keep you out." They answer: "We will come in
nevertheless, we will walk through your paper law." And those who hold
the ground say: "You shall not come in; we will shoot you; we will
keep you out with force of arms." And their answer is: "Keep us out if
you can; we have arms as well as you; we are better men than you; we
will come; we will occupy; we will take; we will keep." Is that a
bogey--a mere dream of the night?
I tell you it is nothing of the sort. It is the thing which will
happen within one hundred years unless there are very different
arrangements made amongst the Western nations from those which exist
to-day; unless the people are moved from the cities back to the land.
Population, gentlemen, is like water: where there is a hollow, thither
it will flow to fill it. Therefore, it is vital to the nations that
they should look into this matter and try to deal with it. I am as
sure as that I stand before you that these words are true; that I get
at the truth, the essence, the fibre, the marrow of the thing, and
that truth, that essence, that fibre, that marrow, is that you must
get your people on to the land out of the cities, and keep them on the
land there to multiply as God commanded them of old.
Now, gentlemen, how does this apply to the great country in which I am
to-day? I say that it applies very closely. I say that very soon there
is going to be an enormous competition for immigration, for
population, and especially for Anglo-Saxon population; that the time
is coming when these people will be bid for, when they will be sought
for, when they will be paid for--paid any price to get them. And I
venture to say to you: Get them while you can, get them from home, get
them from England.
Now, gentlemen, if I live, within a month or two I hope to be able to
show you a plan I have devised and which I hope, which I even dare to
think, may show you how you can get a good many of these people. I
will say no more of that now, except that I trust you will agree with
me when you read it, and that you will let no obstacle stand in your
way, but will all put your shoulders to the wheel and for the sake of
your country, and for the sake of all concerned, will try to help to
bring into your splendid land Englishmen who will be made available to
you, I hope, in many thousands.
I am beginning to be like one of your members of parliament, I fear I
am catching the disease. I will only add this: That all the world is
mad on trade, all the civilised world, at least, has got the idea that
wealth is everything. I controvert that statement; I say that wealth
is nothing. What is wealth without men and women to use it and spend
it? I remember once writing a story in which I represented certain men
shut up in a cave and surrounded by all the diamonds and all the gold
of a continent. And they were starving. I would like to ask you of
what use were those diamonds and that gold to them?
In the same way, of what use is wealth unless you have men and women--
healthy men and women--these are the real wealth of the nation. You
remember the old Greek fable of Antaeus, how, whenever he fell to
earth he arose fresh and strong. So it is with us. Do not believe,
gentlemen, that wealth is everything. Wealth, I maintain, is nothing
compared to flesh and blood, nothing as compared to healthy children;
nor is pomp nor any other thing--these are nothing. The strength of a
people, gentlemen, is not to be found in their Wall Streets, it is to
be found in the farms and fields and villages. I will only add just
this one word--that I do hope that what I have so humbly, so
inadequately tried to say before you may perhaps go deep into the
minds of some of you and set you thinking. For myself, I can only say
that I have tried to carry out this task--not the task of speaking,
but the bigger one--with a single heart, because I believe in its
necessity, because I believe that no man can serve his generation
better than by trying to point out these things and try to make the
people think. If I have done that, gentlemen, I have not lived in
vain. All that I should ask to be said of me when I am gone is this:
"He did his best."
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