Few men of his years have thought as deeply as Harper did, or had clearer perceptions, concerning conditions and forces which make for happiness and progress in social life, and the development of national greatness. Had he been spared he would have been an earnest and practical reformer; silent as his voice is now, the words he once uttered are not without their value to our day and generation. He was a true patriot in sentiment and aspiration. Harper loved his country and its people, and in all that he undertook, which was of a public nature, he was animated by an enthusiasm for the common good. Of the self-imposed tasks he had undertaken in addition to his regular duties at the department of labour, and in each of which he had made some progress, were treatises on “Labour Legislation in The background of all Harper’s thinking It is true that human knowledge is limited, and that the purpose of God is infinite, and so there may rightly be among men differences of opinion as to what, under any circumstances, are the ends to be sought, and the best means to attain those ends; and humility may well characterize all expressions of belief relative thereto; but, to the extent of knowledge gained, the ground underfoot is firm, and humility will not excuse the want of assertion, where right reason is set at naught by wrongful conduct. Moreover, there is much on which men can be agreed, broken arcs visible to all, though the perfect round is seen by none. There are right and wrong, truth and falsehood, honesty and dishonesty, love and hate, purity and vice, honour and dishonour, and the difference between them is as apparent and real as the difference This insistence upon the recognition of responsibility in those favoured by educa “People in Canada to-day are doubtless not so anxious about democratic upheaval. Fortunately the aggravated conditions of an old world metropolis have not yet been developed. The task is easier; the duty none the less imperative. It is more possible to secure the confidence of men who are not embittered by the pangs of slumdom. But because conditions here are not as distressing as they have been and are elsewhere, it is surely no less desirable, with a view to promoting industrial peace and healthy national development, that the men who have opportunity and capacity for the serious study of social and economic problems, should not allow themselves to become fenced off by a wall of indifference of their own “Men are as much open to reason, as liable to accept truth, when they have been convinced of it, as when Arnold Toynbee studied, lectured and wrote. They are as prone to prefer what is genuine to what is pretense and dissimulation. Surely a peculiar obligation to see that men think rightly and act sanely, devolves upon those whose vantage ground should enable them to distinguish what is genuine. Sir Alfred Milner, having in mind the earnest friend of his undergraduate days, said six years ago to the members of Toynbee Hall: ‘I do not go so far as to say that what Oxford thinks to-day England will do to-morrow, but certainly any new movement of thought at the universities in these days rapidly finds its echo in the press and in public opinion.’ Indeed, is there not fair ground for the belief that much of the virtue which has marked the conduct of Great Britain’s High Commissioner at Cape Town, throughout the South African crisis It was his belief in the importance of men recognizing their duties as citizens, and being able to discharge these duties with intelligence and for the common good, which led Harper to prepare a scheme for the teaching of Political Economy in the high schools. The merits of this plan he had summarized as follows: “Such a study would tend to remedy the great evil of democratic institutions, the susceptibility of the masses to the influence of demagogues, and their liability to misconstrue the relations of cause and effect because of ignorance. It would tend to promote mental development, especially in the direction of individual thought. It would tend to raise the standard of such studies in the universities, and this in time would react upon the high schools in the way of more competent teachers, and, in the end, create great possibilities for the prosecution of research in this all important branch of knowledge in our country. It would tend to remedy social evils by giving the He modestly concludes, “I simply put forward a proposal which, I think, if carried out, would tend to modify the evils fostered by ignorance. I have to a great extent taken it as an axiom that whatever tends to disseminate knowledge, to advance truth, and to develop the intellect, cannot be wrong, and should be accepted by all liberal minded men; and this, I think, would be the result of the study of Political Economy in our high schools.” From the notes he had made, and from what is contained in the body of the article, it would appear that he had in mind a course on Civic Ethics, quite as much as on the Elements of Economics, and that he would have liked, if possible, to have had a beginning made in the public schools. Scattered throughout his diary are such observations as the following: “I am becoming more and more convinced that the true rulers of the nation are outside of our parliaments and our law courts, and that the safety of society lies in informing those who form public opinion.” “I feel more and more the necessity of emphasizing the importance of the scientific study of economic and political problems in a country in which every man has the franchise, and is supposed to be in a position to express an intelligent opinion upon public questions, and particularly at a time when labour and kindred problems are prominent in the public mind.” “A man who truly loves his country should be disposed to do his utmost to see it rightly governed.” “The poor downtrodden have more to hope for from men who, having a specialized training in the operation of social forces, apply themselves to the proper remedy, than from all the windy, ultra-radical demagogues.” “It is the alienation—partly, no doubt, due to indolence—of the men of thought from those from whom the mass of the people habitually receive their inspiration, which accounts for much of the crass ignorance and purposeless passion of the people and their demagogues.” “For myself, I have long deplored the foolish worship of this or that set of political machinery by apparently well intentioned men. In Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, there is a solution for much of our distressing bluster and blunder. With confidence in the possibilities of man and a resolute endeavour to strive towards perfection, to allow our best consciousness to play about our stock notions and our painful conditions of society, we should be able to see the real value of things, and ultimately to approach more nearly to right and truth. If our well-intentioned, but perhaps ‘over-Hebraized’ ultra-socialists and ultra-individualists would have perfection more prominently in mind than the pet panacea they have ever before them, and would allow their best consciousness to play about their notions of society and its evils, there would be less of viciousness and ignorance in their propaganda.” “The fallacy of political panaceas! And the vital importance of improving the individual morally, and encouraging him to elevate his ideals! What a splendid thing it would be if every labour agitator, every demagogue, every member of parliament, every professor, teacher and minister, and, in fact, every one who exerts an influence upon the public mind, could realize and act upon the truth which came to Alton Locke after his life of bitter trial: ‘My only ground was now the bare realities of life and duty. The problem of society—self-sacrifice, the one solution.’” “We are too apt to regard social phenomena as if they are entities in themselves, instead of incidents in the development of society, a fact which a man who is amidst the strife of existing social and economic conditions should not lose sight of.” “I am continually impressed with the wisdom of keeping a mind open to suggestion and impressions from the men one meets in the ordinary course of life, in fine, the importance of keeping an open mind. If one can accomplish this, even “Justice and truth must prevail over tyranny and ignorance.” The true mind is revealed in its unconscious moments, and it is, therefore, from passages like these, casually expressed, and constantly recurring in much that he wrote, which was of a private nature, that his real views and beliefs are to be gathered. One or two other passages in a similar vein will disclose these views more fully. During Christmas week of 1900 he visited New York for the first time. Of the many impressions made upon his mind, the contrasts of wealth and poverty, and all that they implied, were to him more real than aught else. “What was particularly irritating to me,” he writes in his journal, after returning from this trip, Elsewhere, he writes after a walk through the city streets: “On the way home I turned over in my mind the question as to how wealthy men come to be so much appreciated in spite of the fact that it is only the lovable in man which is truly loved—by right-minded men at all events, and I am satisfied that, consciously or unconsciously, men come to compromise with their own sense of justice in their estimate of men, until a habit of thought and regard is fixed. What goes forward is something like this: we do not love the man with the big house, but we would love to be the man with the big house. And since the man with the big house often has it in his power to get a bigger house than we have, we come to appreciate him. Many men do this until it comes to be usual to appreciate the man with the big house, and he “Again, whilst there is no great sin per se in being rich, I can see the truth in the old scriptural saying, ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’ When it is so hard for an earnest student to keep his mind rivetted upon the eternal realities of life, through which character building and true happiness come, how much harder must it be for the man whose circumstances make the existing order, if not sufficient, yet comfortable, who has his vanity flattered by the things which he has been pursuing, and who has a vast web of houses and other possessions to shut him off from even an occasional view of the realities. These facts, of course, only hold in their general application and tendencies. There have been, doubtless, splendid rich men. When these reach that state when, of their own free will, and of deliberate choice, they are prepared to go, His fine spirit is no less clearly revealed in the views which he held of the duties of the department of labour, and of the ideals he believed should govern and direct its work. The following extracts from letters to the one with whom he was associated, may serve to show with what purpose and to what end he had given himself to the work. The letters were written during the summer of 1901, while he was in charge of the department: “As I lay in a hammock last night at Kingsmere, and gazed into the deep blue moonlit vault of heaven, and ran over in my mind the progress already made by the department, and taxed my imagination to see its future, the one formidable obstacle which I saw ever before us was the difficulty of keeping firm to one’s convictions in the face of growing clamours for things which one “The work on the Labour Gazette allows opportunity for a careful and searching analysis of the industrial and social life of the Dominion. Already I can see the practical usefulness of the “With the added responsibility there has come to me an increasing sense of the usefulness of the work which we are doing. I believe we can do much towards determining the direction of social progress. With a knowledge of fact, an absence of sectarian prejudice, some understanding of the progress of human institutions, and of the motives which influence men, we should, if we can keep control of ourselves, and maintain high ideals as inspiration for the development of the best that is in us, be able to render a lasting service to this country.” In this connection his views as to the relation of the State and Labour, and of labour problems generally, may not be without interest. “I think,” he writes, “we should discourage anything that tends to prevent Canadian workers “There are those who have held that man has but one right, the right to live, if he can. Modern British democracy does not stop there. That same sense of self-respect which prevents us considering as tolerable a society which allows men and women, who are unable to provide for themselves, to lie down on the street and die, forces us to insist that there shall be some rules for the regulation of industrial life, more particularly “Where the governing power is dependent upon the governed, no abstract theory of individual liberty or what not, will long prevent the State from taking cognizance of apparent and remediable injustice. Doctrinaire political philosophers, painters of Utopias, peddlars of political panaceas, still have their own little nostrums for society, but the law has been built up, as has seemed right or expedient to the law makers of the time, as a series of arbitrary rules based upon experience, and defining the terms upon which people may best live in each other’s society. “The attitude taken by those who have fashioned British policy in industrial matters, recognizing the principle that upon individual ability and individual energy rests national progress, allows to the individual the enjoyment of the fruits of his industry. But it insists that in the getting of it he must be governed by rules of fair play. The rule which underlies the various labour laws seems to be ‘leave well enough alone, but get after the mean man.’ A parent has a right to chastise his child, but that does not mean that he has a right to beat his child whenever he feels inclined, or allow him to be so worked as to start him in life a crippled, deformed, little creature. The Factories Acts, perhaps the best known department of labour legislation, both in England and in Canada, have been created to correct abuses, which would not have arisen but for the practices of hard-hearted employers. In order to thwart the mean man, who will consider neither the comfort nor the well-being of his employees, certain rules have been laid down, declaring how establishments, where abuses are likely to arise, shall be conducted. “The generally accepted rule nowadays is, that good done is sufficient justification of an act, in “Here, then, is an illustration which may be applied. Let every man stand upon his own feet, And of the application of the same principle of fair play to industrial disputes, he writes: “Partly because society feels that it cannot afford to see the machinery of production tied up and inactive, partly because of the effect upon consumers of increased inconvenience and increased prices as the result of that suspension, but largely, I think, because society demands that the men who work shall have fair treatment, because the great heart of society, stripped of its shams, its semblances, its dilettantisms, its hypocrisies and its follies, demands that justice and fair play shall rule between man and man, that they who are willing to work with, their hands shall have a fair return for their work, and shall be allowed to work under fair conditions, it has come to pass “Inasmuch as many industrial disputes have their origin in misunderstandings, and in sentimental alienations from the arbitrary disposition of one party or the other, the Acts in Great Britain and Canada, providing as they do for the appointment of an unbiased mediator to bring the parties together, are calculated to sweep away all unessential entanglements, and make the way clear for a settlement by means of amicable compromise without taking away from either of the parties the privilege, to which each claims a right, of using “Such a bringing together of the two classes in the producing scheme for the consideration of their mutual interests, as well as their mutual differences, is calculated to promote a harmony which should make for the great aim of all, the promotion of industrial peace. Granted the existence of a fair rate of wages and fair conditions of work, the existence of conditions, which can, with little difficulty, merge into a modified form of industrial association or partnership, and there is the vindication of the truth, that there is no necessary warfare between the parties to production.” Lastly, of Democracy; its problems were to him mainly industrial; a well informed public opinion was the one hope, a “If we are to have faith in democracy, we must believe that the people, when informed, will choose what is right in preference to what is base. If we can judge of the disposition of the press and the expressed opinions of prominent men who give thought to the matter, Canada has deliberately set her face towards the promotion of industrial peace, the stamping out of the mean man. Canadians seem disposed to declare with Carlyle, that ‘cash payment is not the sole nexus of man with man. Deep, far deeper than supply and demand are laws, obligations as sacred as man’s life itself. He that will not learn them, perpetual mutiny, contention, hatred, isolation, execration, will wait on his footsteps, till all men discern that the thing which he attains, however golden it look or be, is not success, but the want of success.’” “Working men are not asking for favours. In their federations less and less is heard of technical “I have confidence that public opinion will, in most cases and in the long run, strike a true note. I have faith in the saying, ‘the people may make mistakes, but the people never lie.’ Show the people what it all means, and the people will do what is right. They are learning the insufficiency of political catch words. They know that no political pill, call it by ever so attractive a word, is a cure for all ills.” “Whatever course we may pursue we must not forget that it is but a means to an end. Machinery is good, so long as we remember that it |