The Dominion in 1983 by Ralph Centennius
page 30 of 39 (76%)
page 30 of 39 (76%)
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necessarily in a somewhat inchoate condition. Yet had it not been
for the great men who providentially appeared in our midst--our history, our manners and customs, our whole career as a nation would simply have been a repetition of European civilization with all its defects, failures and vices. Statistics of the period show that neither in the States nor in Canada, amidst all the surrounding newness, had there arisen any new social condition peculiar to this continent which remedied to any extent the evils rampant in old countries. Lunatic asylums, in ghastly sarcasm on a self-styled intellectual age, reared their colossal facades and enclosed their thousands of human wrecks. Huge prisons had to be built in every large town. Hospitals were frequently crowded with victims of foul diseases. Great cities abounded with filthy lanes, alleys, and dwellings like dens of wild beasts. Epidemic diseases occurred from brutal disregard of sanitary measures. Murder and suicide were rife. Horrible accidents from preventible causes occurred daily. Great fires were continually destroying valuable city property, and ruinous monetary 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 |
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