The Dominion in 1983, Ralph Centennius [short books to read TXT] 📗

panics happened every few years. And all this in an age that prided itself on being advanced! An age that produced the telephone, but crowded up lunatic asylums! That cabled messages all round the world, but filled its prisons to the doors! That named the metals in the sun, but could not cleanse its cities! An age, in fact, that was but one remove from the unmitigated barbarism of medieval times! How marvellous is the change wrought by a hundred years! We have not been shocked by a murder in Canada for more than fifty years, nor has a suicide been heard of for a very long period. Epidemic diseases belong to the past. The sewage question, that source of vexation to the municipalities of old, has been scientifically settled—to the saving of enormous sums of money, and to the permanent benefit of the community's health. Malignant scourges, like consumption, epilepsy, cancer, etc., are never heard of except in less favored countries. There is but one prison to a province, and that is sometimes empty. Our cities are all fire-proof, and the night air is never startled now by the hideous jangling of fire-bells, arousing the citizens from sleep to view the destruction of their city. So rational and interesting has daily life become, that mind and body are constantly in healthy occupation; the fearful nervous hurry of old times, that broke down so many minds and bodies, having died out, to give way to a robust force of character which accomplishes much more with half the fuss. Of course, advantages such as these, did not spring upon society all at once; they have come about by comparatively slow degrees.

The first president of the Society of Benefactors, who died some years ago at an advanced age, was the man who started the new order of things. When he commenced to give the world the benefit of his views, he met with a good deal of opposition and ridicule, being told that the world was going on all right and was improving all the time, and that if people would only stop preaching and set to work at doing a little more, things would get better more quickly. He could not be convinced, however, that society had any grounds for its satisfaction, but he took the hint about preaching and stopped his lectures, which he had been giving all through the country. He then set to work at organization, and as he had inherited ample means from a millionaire father, he commenced under good auspices. He went into his work with great eagerness, gathering together all sorts of people, who held views similar to his own, though usually in a vague unpractical way, and formed his first committee of a bishop, celebrated for his enlightened opinions, two physicians, two lawyers, several wealthy merchants, and several working men who were good speakers and had influence among their fellows. His capacity for organization was great, and his success in gaining over to his side young men of means, remarkable. From the very beginning the committee never lacked money. Though they were actuated by purely philanthropic motives, it was one of their first principles never to sink large sums of money in any undertaking that would not pay its own expenses ultimately. There was, therefore, a healthy business-like tone about whatever they did, that distinguished their efforts from many well-intentioned, but sickly, undertakings of the same day, which one after another came to grief, doing nearly as much harm as good. One of their first works was to buy up lots and dwellings in the worst districts of Toronto, where miserable shanties and hovels stood in fetid slums, as foul as any in London or Glasgow. The hovels and shanties were then torn down, and respectable dwellings erected in their stead. The unfortunate wretches, the victims of drink, crime, or thriftlessness, who inhabited such places, were not turned away to seek a fouler footing elsewhere, but were taken in hand by the working-men on the committee, and were started afresh in life with every encouragement. They were generally permanently rescued from degradation, but if some fell back their children were saved, and so the next generation was spared a family of criminals. Montreal was next visited and the same thing done there; attention was then turned to Quebec and Winnipeg. Successful attempts were afterwards made to control the liquor traffic, not by sudden prohibition, which always increased the evil, but by common sense methods, necessarily somewhat slow, but sure. When the Society had been at work ten years, there was a very perceptible diminution in the amount of crime and smaller offences in all their spheres of action. Police forces could be decreased, and a prison here and there closed. This had a tendency to lessen the rates, so the taxpayer became touched in his tenderest part—his pocket. His heart and his conscience then immediately softened toward the Society's work, though years of preaching and the existence of all abominable evils close to his door had failed to move him. When this point had been reached, the Society began to be looked upon as one of the great remedial agents of the age, and work was much easier. One evil after another was grappled with, and in time subdued. Scientific researches were set on foot in hygiene, medicine, and every subject from which the community at large could derive benefit, till in twenty years time so much general improvement had been effected that Canada's ways of doing things came to be quoted in other countries as a precedent. Our cities were the best built, best drained, cleanest and healthiest, and our city populations the most orderly and most enlightened. The Society's roll of members now included a great number of eminent men, and their operations were extended over the whole Dominion, and works of all kinds were carried on simultaneously in all parts. Outside the Society, it had become quite fashionable for all classes to take the most eager interest in everything concerning the public welfare, so the Dominion continued to prosper and advance with wonderful rapidity. Thus it happened that we came to take the lead among nations and have been able to keep foremost ever since, though with our 93,000,000 we are not by any means the largest nation.

The improved hygienic conditions under which we live have had the effect of very largely increasing the population. Our forefathers in their wisdom spent large sums of money in attracting immigrants to our shores, but it did not occur to them to increase the population by preventing people from dying. Very few persons die now, except from old age, and the tremendous and almost incredible mortality of old times among infants is stopped, consequently the death rate is very low, and the excess of births over deaths very great. There are only three doctors to each large city, and they are subsidised by government or the town councils, because there are not enough sick people from whom they could make a living as of yore. The good health of the public is also in some measure due to the fact of our scientific men having been able, since a few years past, to gain a good deal of control over the weather. By means of captive balloons, currents of electricity between the higher atmosphere and the earth are kept passing regularly. By other electrical contrivances as well as these, rain can now be nearly always made to come at night and can be prevented from falling during the day. Hurricanes and desolating storms are also held very much under control.

Our contrasts are now drawing to a close. Enough has been said to make it plain to the slowest intellect among us, what is gained by having been born in the twentieth century, instead of in the nineteenth, and by being born a Canadian, instead of to any other land. There can hardly be to-day such a woeful creature as a Canadian who does not realise and is not proud of the grandeur of his heritage. Our race, owing to the splendid hygienic and social conditions that have been dilated upon, is one of the healthiest and strongest on the face of the earth. We are not demoralized or effeminated by the luxury and abundance which are ours, but elevated rather, and strengthened by the very magnificence and opulence of our circumstances, and by the perfect freedom, under healthful restraint, which we enjoy through the community's strong, vigorous, moral and intellectual tone.

As there is nothing more wonderful about the present age, or more characteristic of the times, than our mode of travelling, these few pages shall be concluded with a plan of a very simple journey, a journey which can be strongly recommended to all who are wishing for change of scene and are somewhat bewildered in choosing a route among the innumerable places in the world which have claims on their attention. We will imagine that a party of twenty has been made up, and that the start is from Halifax, the direction eastward, and the destination Constantinople. The car which is timed to start at 7 a.m., is standing at rest on the sloping side, while the passengers, say fifty in number, are taking their seats in the luxurious chamber within. The first stop is at Sydney, Cape Breton, and the car is pointed accurately in that direction. At three minutes to 7 the engineers and conductor come on board; the former to place the powerful oxyhydrogen charge in the great breech-loading tube, the latter to close the doors against ingress or egress. Precisely at 7 the signal is given. A furious and powerful hissing is then heard, as well as a momentary scraping of the car on its runners. In another second she is high in the air, and already Halifax has nearly receded from the engineer's sight. The rate of a mile in three seconds is kept up till Sydney rapidly appears in view. In the next few seconds the engineer exerts his skill and the car lands gracefully on the slide, still in brisk motion. After a little scraping and crunching on the runners, she pulls up at the station platform at the bottom of the decline, ten minutes only after leaving Halifax. The next spring is made to St. John's, Newfoundland, which is reached in fourteen minutes. Here a few minutes are taken up in pointing the car accurately for Galway. Great caution is necessary, and very delicate and beautiful instruments are employed. When all are on board again and ready for the supermarine voyage, the engineer loads up with a much more powerful charge than before. He prepares at the start for a speed of a mile in three seconds, then, when fairly out over the sea, a stronger electric current is applied to the huge charge, and a speed of a mile, or even more, a second is obtained. This fearful velocity is not permitted overland, for fear of collisions, as car routes cross each other. But no routes cross over the sea between St. John's and Galway, nor is the Galway car allowed to leave till the St. John's car has arrived, and vice versa, therefore the highest speed attainable is permitted. Before land again looms in view, speed is much slackened, and now the engineer requires all his experience and his utmost skill. The high winds across the ocean may have caused his car to deviate slightly from its path, so as soon as land appears the deviation has to be corrected, and only two or three seconds remain in which to correct it. However, the engineer is equal to his task, and the car is now in the same manner as before, brought to a stand in Galway at 6 minutes to 8, just 30 minutes out from St. John's and 54 from Halifax. At 8 o'clock Dublin is reached, next comes Holyhead, and then London at 8.20. Here passengers for the South of Europe change cars. As the car for the South does not start till 8.30, there is time for a hasty glance at the enormous central depot just arrived at—one of the wonders of the world. Cars are coming in every minute punctually on time from all parts of the country and the world. The arrival slide is here shaped like the inside or concavity of a shallow cone, two miles in diameter, with the edge rather more than 150 feet from the ground. In the centre, where the cars stop, is a hydraulic elevator, by which they are immediately let down below to make room for the next arrival. The passengers are then disembarked without hurry. Those who are to continue their journey then go on board their right car and are again started on time. The departure slide is like a lower storey of the arrival one. It is immediately beneath it, but its grade is not quite parallel. Near the centre, where the cars start, the upper slide is twenty-five feet above the lower one, but at