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