Читать книгу The Stream Runs Fast - Nellie Letitia McClung - Страница 13
ОглавлениеSocial Life
Collier's "History of England", studied by public school children in my day, was a fairly dull recital of wars, conspiracies and the misdeeds of kings, but there were paragraphs—all too few—which bore the byline "Social Life of the People." I knew them by heart. They were emerald islands in a dull grey sea. In these meagre records we learned that the early Britons dyed their skins with a purple herb called woad. We were not told why they did it, but it seemed a good idea, like painting Easter eggs. They made clothes of the skins of animals. They put greased paper in their windows before they had glass, and there were some really exciting paragraphs which had to do with blood bonds and "shield maidens" who hurled the javelins, and brave hunters who took their swords in their teeth and went into the sea to do battle with the walrus and sea lion. Not much was said about the women, but we were pretty sure that they were left to do all the uninteresting work. The men hunted, fished and fought, doing a little cattle rustling as opportunity offered, while the women tanned the skins, made the clothes, and mucked around on the earthen floors, raising the family in their spare time. Later they learned to weave and spin. The Spear and the Spindle division runs back into the grey shades of the ancient days.
Now I wonder if in one hundred years the people will be interested in the social life of the people of my generation. When people are living on food put up in pellets which can be carried in their vest pockets, and travelling through the air and communicating with each other at will with distance annihilated, it may be that they will like to read of a time when the pace of life was slower and the struggle for existence a day to day matter, involving real effort and considerable ingenuity. Far be it from me to wish that the hands of the clock should ever turn backward, but one cannot help wondering in what direction the human soul will develop, when it is free from the burdening cares which make up the battle for existence.
Perhaps we have emphasized the importance of work too much, but we knew no other way of living, so we have made a virtue of it. We speak of basic industries and we know that what happens on the farms, in the mines and in the lumber woods, happens to the race. There is not a public man today that does not pay his tribute of praise to the worker. The "little people" we call them now, "who carry the load." Goldsmith sounded this note in his "Deserted Village," when he wrote:
"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, A breath can make them as a breath has made, But the bold peasantry, the nation's pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied."
On the farms before electricity and labor-saving devices lightened their loads, women's work obsessed them. Their hours were endless, their duties imperative. Many broke under the strain and died, and their places were filled without undue delay. Some man's sister or sister-in-law came from Ontario to take the dead woman's place. Country cemeteries bear grim witness to the high mortality rate in young women.
I wrote a story about one of these in 1914. I remember the date because we had just come to Edmonton and I had an attack of quinsey, which laid me up for a week. This gave me time to catch up on my reading. In a country paper I read of the death of a farmer's wife, aged thirty-three, who left "six small children to mourn her loss." The obituary closed piously with the words: "Thy will be done."
I did not believe that it was the will of God that had taken away this young mother and decided I should write something about it and because I wanted the story to be told many times, I wrote it in verse, knowing that the beat of words, even ordinary words, carries far, like music across water. I have no illusions about my skill as a writer of poetry, but the story I wrote about Jane Brown certainly went far and wide, and was recited at many Women's Institutes, socials and other gatherings, and was copied in hundreds of newspapers. It is nearly thirty years since I wrote about Jane, but even in the last year I have had several requests for copies.
The worst feature of life on the farm for women in that period was the lack of household help. Water was carried in and carried out. The women had access to no laundries, no bakeries, and I knew homes where there was not even a sewing machine. I remember very well the first ready-made dress I saw. A daring woman, Mrs. Bill Johnston, sent to Montreal for it and sent the money, fifteen dollars, mind you, and the neighbours cheerfully prophesied that she would never see the money again or the dress either. But the dress came and even the doubters had to admit it was a good-looking dress, and could be made to fit by "boning the body". The owner, declared that she had enough bones of her own, and she was going to wear it just as it was. She liked a soft-fitting dress.
The first evidence of co-operation among the farmers that I remember was the inauguration of "beef-rings," and I regret that I am not able to record its origin. It may have been sponsored by the Department of Agriculture. The head of the beef-ring had a chart, showing how the meat could be divided. One animal was killed each week, and the farmers shared the meat. The people who got a sirloin roast one week would get stewing beef off the neck the next week, and the whole scheme worked without a hitch. But the coming of the automobile changed all our habits. The farmer with a car drove into town for his meat, and his groceries, too, so the little store languished, not able to meet the competition which the city stores offered. Other changes came too. The young people, having tasted the delights of driving into town with dinner at a hotel and a dance at the Masonic Hall, began to rebel at the "twenty-five hour day" on the farm, and dream of nice clean jobs in town. The trek from the farm began, with devastating effects on agriculture. But the stores in town, and particularly the banks, benefitted by the advent of good, smart, industrious country boys.
Looking back at it all now, I am convinced that the gloomy home atmosphere drove out more young people than their distaste for the long hours and the endless chores. Many a farmer, finding his years of labor sitting heavily on him, sank into a bog of surliness. They felt their long years of heavy work had given them the right to be disagreeable. They seemed to resent youth with its gayety and love of fun. The colts in the pastures, kicking up their heels, kittens playing over a wood-pile; children shouting over a game of "pom-pom-pullaway" in the school yard brought no smiles to these sour faces. Who was to blame?
The settlement of a new country takes a heavy toll, and one generation is bound to suffer. Education did not keep pace with the settlement, and children—especially the boys who were big enough to work—did not attend school even when the school came. Perhaps they went for a few months in the winter, but they were shy and backward, ashamed of their ignorance and the teachers were not always wise or tactful. These big lads did not like school, naturally. No one likes to appear at a disadvantage. When they grew older they knew they had been cheated out of something. This frustration took different forms in different people. In some it blossomed into a wholesome concern for the education of their own children. Others, not so fortunate, sank into a morass of resentment against society in general. They were the sour-faced ones whose boys left home as soon as they could.
In the first school in which I taught, one of the men of the district tried to keep his boys from going to the lake to skate, which surely was an innocent and inexpensive form of entertainment. He was afraid they might start to go into the little town, and there be tempted to spend money. I remember his words of complaint to me when I pleaded for the boys.
"When I was their age," he said bitterly, "I never left the farm, but these two young scamps go out of the house three times for every once they come in!"
I met these big boys many places, and my heart was heavy for them, and heavier still when I learned later how the Finnish people had solved that problem with their Continuation Schools. We could have had something of this nature if we had valued education as highly as the Finns value it, but in a new country everyone is in a hurry to get ahead. Education, they believed, could wait, but in all human history nothing waits. The stream runs fast. We cannot help the past, but we need not repeat its mistakes!
