Man versus Sea

MAN versus SEA.

The Romance of a Lost Mine.

By Richard A. Haste.

The Wide World Magazine, January 1908. Vol. xx.—36.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle October 2017 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca

A story that has never before been told — the strange tale of a mine which was for years well - nigh world - famous, but is now lost beneath the sea. “I have confined myself strictly to facts,” writes the author, “as gathered from the seventh report of the Bureau of Mines of Ontario and the caretaker of Silver Islet.”

THAT region lying about Lake Superior and including the “height of land”—the great ridge-pole of the roof of the continent — has always been a land of romance, a land of mystery. Here are laid the scenes of many, weird and beautiful legends. The rock-girt shores of the lake were the favourite walks of the Great Spirit. Here, according to the Indians, the maker of the world hid his treasures, and gave them into the keeping of Missibizi, the god of the sea. To this treasure-land, long ago, came strange people from the far south, the Mound-builders and the Aztecs, for copper. To this “shining big sea-water” came also, in a later day, those men of iron whose deeds make up the story of the Great Lone Land—a story that has never been fully told.

It is with one of these hidden treasures of this great lake that this story has to deal.

You who have been so fortunate as to take that most delightful of all summer journeys, the lake trip from Owen Sound or Sarnia to Port Arthur on one of the Canadian Pacific steamers, doubtless remember Thunder Cape, that bold promontory that guards the entrance to Thunder Bay and the twin harbours of Port Arthur and Fort William. No doubt your attention was called to Isle Royale, lying to your left as you approach the cape, and you learned, perhaps, some of its wonderful history. Perhaps, too, if it were a clear day, the captain gave you his binocular and directed your eyes to a low-lying island near the north shore not far from the base of Thunder Cape—a little island that seemed not so large as your hand, on which stand queer-shaped buildings, now partially wrecked and going to decay; but this you will not notice even with the glass. Silver Islet, it is called. Perhaps the captain told you of the lost mine beneath the lake; of the shafts and levels that honeycomb the rock more than a thousand feet below the surface of the water; of the tons and tons of silver that lay in sight when the cold waters of the lake “jumped the claim” and took possession of all save the upper works.

It may be you were told also of the dull shocks that are frequently felt, accompanied by low, rumbling thunder, though the sky is clear from horizon to horizon—the ghosts of imprisoned miners blasting for silver ore beneath the sea, say the superstitious natives.

It was, I think, in the year 1868 that a small party of miners, prospecting for copper at the base of Thunder Cape, chanced to land on a barren rock about a mile from shore to plant observation stakes. This rock was about sixty feet across, and rose not more than four feet above the mean level of the lake. It resembled the dome of a huge human skull, just rising out of the water.

Across this Skull Rock, as it was then called, ran a vein of galena, in which a few strokes of the pick revealed the presence of silver. A half-dozen powder-blasts were sufficient to detach all the ore-bearing rock above the waterline, but the vein was traceable some distance out into the lake, where, through the clear water, large nuggets of silver were visible. These were dislodged with crowbars, the men working up to their necks in the ice-cold water. The game, however, was worth the candle, for the ore thus taken out, sacked and shipped to Montreal, assayed seven thousand dollars per ton pure silver.

The location was owned by the Montreal Mining Company, Limited, a company of con­servative capitalists. In a way luck had favoured them, for here within their grasp was one of the fabled treasures of the lake. So far as human laws were concerned, it belonged to them. But—and it was a big but—the Great Spirit had placed it within the keeping of the sea. For three hundred miles to the east there is nothing to break the awful sweep of the wind. And when, at the call of the storm, the legions of the deep come forth, the little treasure-rock disappears, utterly lost in the spume and froth of the breakers. Where was the man or company of men who would presume to defy these giant powers and remove this jewel from its settings—this treasure from its keep?

The men composing the Montreal Mining Company were conservative, as I have already stated. They were willing and ready, in the pursuit of wealth, to raze hills and tunnel mountains; they were ready to sink shafts through the solid rock until they could feel the earth’s internal fires. In such cases the opposition to be encountered could be measured and provided for; but they shrank from measuring their strength against the unknown powers of the wind and sea. Therefore, they accepted an offer of two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars and transferred Silver Islet and a number of surrounding mining locations to an American syndicate, headed by Alexander II. Sibley, of New York.

Here begins the active history of one of the world’s most famous mines—a history more dramatic in its details than novelist ever conceived.

It seems that when an unusual task is to be performed — when a Man is wanted — the times, with unerring instinct, bring him forth. Here was an Herculean task, and the first throw of the dice turned up the man—a modest mining engineer, William B. Frue.

There is something strongly feline about Lake Superior — it is so lithe and soft and caressing. In August and September, and often later, it is usually in a peculiarly gentle mood. Like a great tiger, it stretches itself in the warm sun and purrs and sleeps. It is so beautiful, and seems so harmless; yet beneath this calm and gentleness you can see the giant muscles swell as the great cat extends and contracts its claws in pure enjoyment of its latent power.

On one of these perfect days, September 1st, 1870, Superintendent Frue, with machinery, supplies, a crew of thirty-four men, and a great raft of timber, arrived at Silver Islet. There was not a ripple on the surface of the water. The basaltic ledges of Thunder Cape, even to the features of the Sleeping Giant, were duplicated in the water below. But Superintendent Frue knew the lake; he knew its moods. This one might last a day, a week, perhaps a month—not much longer, at any rate; and then!—

There was the Skull Rock—a mere foothold— a tiny island into which a shaft must be sunk down to the bowels of the earth, while around or over it broke the angry waters of this mighty brother of the sea. To sink that shaft and guard it against the fury of the lake was Superintendent Frue’s task.

It was finally decided to encircle the island with a crib of timber filled with rock to break the force of the waves, while a stone and cement coffer-dam was to furnish protection for the immediate mouth of the shaft.

With feverish haste the work was pushed ahead; eighteen hours was a day’s work. If only the cribbing could be got into place before the autumn storms began all might be well. One week, two weeks, a month passed, and still the great lake slept, unconscious or in contempt of the puny efforts of the human ants on Silver Islet. Day after day the sun rose as out of a mirror, and sank unclouded behind the shoulders of the Sleeping Giant.

Five weeks! The cribbing was done, the shaft was being sunk, and every day the precious metal was coming to the surface. Six weeks— seven weeks! The human ants were beginning to feel secure in their new abode. Then came the 26th of October.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when the wind began to blow strong from the north-east. In half an hour the lake right to the horizon line was white with foam.

“It’s coming at last,” said Frue; “but we’re here first, and I think we’ll stay.”

When the second shift quitted work at six o’clock the waves were leaping the east breakwater, deluging the men outside the coffer-dam. From the rocky shore of Thunder Cape came the boom of the surf, like an incessant, rolling cannonade.

The little plunging tug had just arrived with the third shift, wet to the skin. The cribbing on the windward side was already trembling with the impact of the waves. To remain stubbornly would be useless, and might mean suicide. It was the first trial of strength, and the result, to the mind of the superintendent, was at least doubtful. Orders were therefore given for all hands to go ashore, to the mainland.

There was little sleep for Superintendent Frue that night. He had had first innings; he had had fair play; he had made his utmost score.

And now the sea was taking a hand in the game. All night he walked the beach and listened, guessing, as best he could, the progress of the battle. How the breakers roared—how the wind howled and shrieked as wave after wave came home!

Before sunrise the wind had died down, and by ten o’clock the sea had subsided to a sullen under-swell. Frue promptly went out to the scene of the conflict, and his heart sank at what he saw. Two hundred feet of the break­water had been carried away; the coffer-dam was a partial wreck, and, as if in rebuke, the storm had filled the shaft to the brim with the rock of the cribbing.

The company had agreed to give Frue a bonus of twenty-five thousand dollars, in addition to his salary, on condition that before September 1st, 1871— the first year of operation — he mined and shipped ore to the value of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, an amount sufficient to cover the original purchase price and the bonus. On the morning of October 27th that bonus appeared to Frue as far away as the moon. But under this apparently crushing defeat he lost neither his heart nor his head. He had learned something from the storm. He had learned something of the game as it was played by his antagonist. All hands were put to work; the cribbing was replaced and strengthened, the coffer-dam was restored, and the debris removed from the shaft. The sea remained quiet. Mining was resumed, and by the last day of November, when navigation closed, the plucky superintendent had the satisfaction of knowing that one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of silver ore had been shipped down the lake to Montreal.

Hardly had the vessel with the last shipment got away when the mercury dropped to ten below zero. For a week it froze, covering parts of the lake with a heavy coating of ice, and then from the south-east came another storm.

It was a flank attack, and this time the sea, as if maddened by the persistence of the invaders, brought up its artillery and hurled tons upon tons of ice against the cribbing, which crumbled like an egg-shell before the tremendous onslaught. But this awful battering defeated its own purpose; the accumulation of ice soon formed a breakwater against which the waves beat out their fury. For three days and nights the storm raged; then the sea smoothed out, and again Frue took stock of the ruins. The coffer-dam remained, but most of the cribbing was gone. The foreman, after looking over the wreck, remarked, “You can’t make anything stop here.” But Frue thought differently.

Nature is the greatest of engineers, and he who would oppose her must adopt her plans and be ever ready to profit by a hint. The ice-gorge gave Frue the key to the situation. Taking advantage of the winter and the ice, he threw out a breakwater facing the south-east. This structure had a base of seventy-five feet, rose twenty feet above the surface, and was backed by cribbing and debris from the mine.

Work was prosecuted both underground and on the defences with little interruption until March 8th. Then the lake gathered its forces for what seemed not only another assault, but the commencement of a campaign of annihilation.

Masses of ice as large as the island itself were hurled against the groaning fortifications, which were soon driven bodily up the incline toward the centre of the island. Wave after wave leaped the breakwater, and it seemed that the lake would at last succeed in regaining the whole of the lost territory, and in driving the invaders permanently from the ground.

Storm succeeded storm, during the entire month, each assault more terrific than the last. There was no rest for the miners day or night. Every interval of calm was employed in repairing the breaks and in strengthening the weak places. At last, apparently defeated, the great lake withdrew its forces, and the superintendent for the first time saw in his mind’s eye the twenty-five-thousand-dollar bonus — and it was not far away.

At the close of the first year, the clean - up showed a gross output of nearly one million dollars. The bonus was immediately paid.

There seemed no longer any danger from storms. To all appearances the lake had given up the contest—abandoned the treasure to the spoilers, who, during the next two years, took out another million in silver.

Silver Islet had now become one of the wonder-mines of the world. The little island—the bare Skull Rock—had grown in the meanwhile to ten times its original size. It extended to the outer breakwaters, and supported not only the upper works of the mine, but machine-shops, store-houses, and permanent quarters for certain employes of the mine. From the eastern angle rose a lighthouse, while on the lee side were built great docks and breakwaters for the protection of the now important shipping. On the shore a town had sprung up—a town with churches and a school-house, great reducing works, club-rooms for the miners, and neat cottages for the families of five hundred workmen.

Frue was the magician who had wrought the change. He had found a barren and desolate rock a mile from the shore of a howling wilderness, and in three years had made it the centre of one of the most important enterprises on the continent. He had found the treasure he sought guarded by the most powerful and treacherous of natural forces. He had met every emergency, and at the end of three years was the apparent conqueror. But Nature never gives up a battle.

Ages ago, as if in sentient anticipation of what was to come, the lake had run a counter-mine underneath the island. The main shaft had reached the depth of three hundred feet when this counter-mine was struck. The imprisoned waters, under the enormous pressure, leaped forth fiercely, driving the miners from level to level. Despite the work of a four-inch pump, the water rose at the rate of ten feet per hour. Another six-inch pump was installed, but the two, working day and night, could barely keep the water below the fifth level. An order was dispatched for a pump with a twelve-inch plunger, but before it could arrive the lake made one more tremendous effort to demolish the upper works. A double attack from above and below seemed to have been planned. All previous storms were dwarfed—they were mere zephyrs compared to the hurricane that now swept down from the north-east. A breach was at once made in the breakwater and sixty feet of the structure carried away. Before the damage could be repaired another assault carried away three hundred and sixty feet of the cribbing, with the blacksmith’s shop and five thousand tons of rock. So violent was the wind that refuse rock flew about the island like hailstones. Fortunately the machinery remained intact and the pumps were kept going. At last the storm died away, the mammoth pump arrived, and slowly the waters were got under control. It was a well-planned attack, and the defenders won by a margin so small that an accident, however slight, would have turned the scale.

It was soon after this that Superintendent Frue left the employ of the company and disappears from its history. The fortunes of this remarkable mine for the next ten years need not be recounted. The story differs but little from that of similar ventures. Deeper and deeper drove the shafts, and wider and wider extended the stopes and levels. In constant fear of the wind and sea from above, and the water from below, the work went on. Some years the out­put ran into the hundreds of thousands, but even then it barely paid running expenses.

At last a year came—a poor year—when the output fell far short of the operating expense. The indications were as good as ever, but the ore in hand did not seem to pan out well. The stockholders were called upon to make up the deficiency. There was grumbling and dissension. Rich ore to the estimated value of five hundred thousand dollars was visible in the roof of the first level, but its removal had hitherto been regarded as dangerous. Now, however, plans were decided upon for putting in a false roof and removing this lode.

The main shaft had now reached a depth of thirteen hundred feet below the lake level. Gigantic pumps, driven by powerful engines, were kept busy holding back the insidious sea. Storms might come and wreck the upper works, but storms subside and the ravages of the waves can be repaired; but this eternal assault from beneath could be resisted only by a tireless energy that never slumbered. Let the throbbing engines cease their work, let the pumps stop but for a day, and the battle of years would be lost.

It was November, 1884, and the coal was running low. Only a few hundred tons remained in the sheds on the island, and the hungry furnaces would soon devour that. But more was expected any day—the winter supply had already left the Lower Lakes; it should be somewhere on Lake Superior now. Day followed day, however, and it did not come. It was getting late, and navigation might close at any time. Work went on as usual—some slight accident, no doubt, had delayed the steamer; the coal was sure to come, the miners told themselves.

Day and night was heard the monotonous thud, thud, thud of the pumps; but all the time the coal was getting lower, and the sea was waiting—waiting.

It was an anxious Christmas for the folk of Silver Islet—that Christmas of 1884. There was hoping against hope for the arrival of the long-looked-for steamer. What if it should not come? Could it come now? The cold was intense, and already the ice had formed six inches thick in the bays, and the ice-field was creeping out into the lake, from which rose, like steam from a mighty cauldron, huge banks of cumulus clouds.

The New Year came—January 1st, 1885— and no coal. But instead there came a dog-team from Duluth, bearing the bitter news that a drunken captain with a cargo of a thousand tons of coal for Silver Islet had allowed his vessel to be caught in the ice at Houghton! The furnaces were put on half rations, in the vain hope that something might happen to bring relief. But at last a day came when the fires went out, the pumps stopped, and the exultant sea reclaimed its own.

Twenty-two years have passed since that fatal day, a generation has come and gone, but no. attempt has been made to fight back the sea and re-establish the mine. The island and the village that once stretched for a mile along the beach are abandoned and desolate—inhabited only by a caretaker whose nearest neighbours are at Port Arthur, twenty-five miles away by water. The great engines and the hoisting machinery on the island are rusting where they stand. The lighthouse has gone. The docks and breakwaters are rotting—they are at peace now with the sea, which, in contempt, has given them over to the slow tortures of time. Down in the drifts and galleries where men once wrought fishes stare with unblinking eyes at the slimy walls. On the mainland the great reducing plant, with its batteries, stamps, and vanners, is rapidly going to decay. Grass grows in the abandoned street, and at night hedgehogs hold high revel in the silent church and owls hoot from the rickety tower.

Why has this mine, with all its wealth, been left in the possession of the sea? I do not know. The caretaker will tell you strange stories of strange doings. He will tell you that sometimes, when the air is full of light, when the wind sleeps and the placid sea reflects the great blue bowl of heaven, the surface of the lake will suddenly heave in long low swells, and then smooth out again. Then, as from the depths of the earth, come low, rumbling sounds, muffled and indistinct, like a far-off cannonade. He will tell you, too, that at night, when the storm comes from the east and the air is filled with blinding wrack, ghostly lights flit about the treasure-island, and in the lulls of the wind you may distinctly hear the rumble of a hoisting cable and the rhythmic pulsations of a ghostly engine.

He will give you his theory — weird and uncanny—that, should the waters ever be driven back, nothing will be found but the barren walls of a barren mine.

I fear that years of almost uninterrupted solitude may have warped his imagination. Be that as it may, however, the fact remains that this silver fleece is guarded by a dragon that never sleeps—the omniscient power of the sea.

Life in the Magdalen Islands 1911

Life in the Magdalen Islands.

BY W. LACEY AMY.

From The Wide World Magazine 1911, July (presumed), source eBay photo of GB edition.

It is safe to say that very few readers of “The Wide World Magazine” have ever heard of the Magdalen Islands. They belong to Canada, yet not one Canadian in ten has any knowledge of them. Situated in the centre of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, ice-bound in winter and storm-beset at other seasons, they are entirely cut off from the outside world for many months of the year. Mr. Amy gives a very interesting account of the quaint, easy-going islanders, very few of whom have ever left their native shores.

MANY a tourist thinks that he has seen Canada when he has taken the five-day trip from Halifax to Victoria, or the still shorter “transcontinental” from boat to boat—Montreal to Vancouver. A Canadian will laugh at such a claim, and furnish as justification those interest­ing sections never seen on such journeys—the wonderful valleys of the Maritime Provinces, the quaint villages of French Quebec, the newly-discovered wealth of Northern Ontario, the productive plains in the Western Provinces, far from the view of the railways, and the fruit and ranch-lands hidden away between the mountain ranges of British Columbia.

It takes months to cover Canada; it takes years to know it. And even the native Canadian has only just begun to realize the wealth of his country and the out-of-the-way places that make this great dominion a veritable book of revelations.

The great Annapolis Valley and the Metapedia

End of page 1 of 7.

Asquithian Warfare

Asquithian Warfare

Showing Why the Old Government in England Did Not Get Along With War.

By Lacey Amy.

From Saturday Night magazine 20 January, 1917, Toronto, Canada.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, 25 September, 2017 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca

Apology – This entry has been created from very old microfilm from a very old magazine. Certain areas of the graphic are unclear. I have endeavoured to reason at the missing parts of words. If there are errors, or if the meaning is not clear, it is my fault./drf

AT last the seal is broken. Into Canada’s bewildered but loyal complacency that Britons never will be slaves one may interject a note that, up to a month ago, might have made that last hundred thousand a Utopian dream. The change of Government has opened one’s lips.

I do not believe that with Asquith as Premier, the Allies would have won the war, save by a starvation exacting almost as much from England as from Germany.

I am equally confident that, with Asquith’s Cabinet free from the beginning to follow it’s bent, we would never have won the war. Before it finally lifted him from the Premier’s chair with reverent gentleness, only public opinion had saved Great Britain from the depths of humility. And I give to the late Government full credit for the Empire’s one example of war statesmanship, its complete and wonderful financing of the Allies.

Canada has been fortunate in being spared the spectacle of Asquith’s persistent failure. Add to bereavement and business disasters the sum of the daily evidences that the late Government was utterly unable to grasp the seriousness of the war, and one may have some lot of what England has been passing through. Canada, judging by her Press, has seen only the big failures, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, the Dardanelles, and the rest of the ugly diplomatic round. England has shuddered with the certainty that even in the very foundations of victory the Government has been leaving holes that would sooner or later bring the entire structure down. .

I do not speak rashly in this. I came to England with every prejudice against the Government’s detractors, with every respect for Asquith’s marvellous capacity of a kind. I still retain that respect; but an intelligent Canadian, reared in an atmosphere of action instead of deliberation, knows that war cannot be waged adagio. And in movement of that kind alone lay Asquith’s strength.

I will not even touch on the large follies that have impressed themselves on the world to Britain’s eternal discredit. What Canada will find of most interest now is the side-issues here at the source of England’s might which reveal in an amazing manner the reasons why Lloyd George replaced the late master of circumspection.

Perhaps the most complete exhibition of the late Cabinet’s failure to grasp the awful seriousness of the war was in the recruiting muddle. There is no discredit in having tried voluntary enlistment, but there is in having delayed conscription until Germany had entrenched herself in France. Therein lies, only one of the proofs of the fatal hold of tradition in England. And when conscription was introduced it was built like a sieve. The conscientious objector crawled through the first hole. Labor, grandly as it has responded in parts, found a range of meshes large enough to escape the net. To relieve itself of one more war responsibility the Government left the enforcement of conscription in the hands of local Tribunals.

The farce in this was that each of these Tribunals knew personally every man brought before it for exemption, was dependent upon him for votes or business, was personally interested in many of them, and was always blinded by the spectre of local requirements. They had to pass on their own employees, on their personal friends, on their debtors and creditors, and many of them were made up of members out of sympathy with conscription or out of tune with the requirements of the war. Thus were ex­empted, for example, eligible young unmarried men like these: a professional billiard player, a comedian, a secre­tary of an organization, for fighting conscription, municipal employees in the most unimportant positions, a tie manufacturer, teachers who admitted their opposition to conscription and even their antagonism to England, a street gambler who posed as a fish porter, pugilists by the half dozen, an organist whose fingers might be stiffened by war. an undertaker’s coachman who could drive four horses, one with no other appeal than an unfaltering smile, a man who claimed to be a born coward, hundreds of Jews with extensive businesses which had grown from nothing, a man whose parents’ illiteracy would leave his brothers at the front without their weekly letter, horsemen, an ambulance driver, cabmen, a picture framer, a coach builder, a plumber, a Tribunal member’s chauffeur, and on and on.

THE strong young man with ingenuity defied the military. If all else failed he sought work in a munitions factory, was badged even after he had been denied exemption, and conscription passed him by. Thousands of them were hidden safely away in these factories or in “starred” occupations which they sought in extremity without an hour’s experience. Five thousand young men were finally taken from Woolwich Arsenal alone.

And the Government departments were equally funk-holes. Every one of them had its thousands. It was estimated that in Whitehall and other Government offices at the middle of 1916, two years after the war started, 50,000 men of military age were cuddled. The Cabinet heads stubbornly refused to oust them, although nine-tenths were engaged only in the simplest clerking.

Pullman Company secured exemption from the Adjutant-General because its employees were engaged in “carrying officers back and forth.” Big firms with hundreds of branches had their managers exempted, although individual businesses went to the wall by the thousands because their proprietors were called up. Badges were sent en bloc, by the Government without a moment’s investigation of those who were awarded them. So that porters and simple office clerks were all immune if the products of the firm were even in part considered war necessities. Every Government department had the privilege of granting badges, and it frequently happened that those whom the Tribunals refused to exempt were saved by badges sent by parcel post. The secretary of one of the departments most intimately concerned with the progress of the war badged 35 of his farm employees, also retaining nine fancy gardeners. In France exemptions ran to hundreds of thousands, said Lloyd George in an explosion of disgust, while in England they ran to millions—more than 3,000,000 men of military age.

Had every other source of labor been tapped there would be little to say, although loafing was the main interest of these slackers. But men of 35 to 40, with large families, were turned loose from exempted occupations to make way for the young unmarried men, until finally some of the Tribunals struck, refusing to send another man to the trenches until the scandal was aired. The result was a Man-Power Board that picked out a few here and there as a sop to public demand, but truckled completely to the original ideas that had held sway. For each department was jealous of its authority. Each refused to make the sacrifices it was demanding of the public. Last summer the Government declined to grant any Whitsun holiday—and promptly went off on a six weeks’ holiday of its own.

The matter of substitution was equally ignored except in public. Some weeks ago a critic of mine in Satuiuay Night indignantly wrote: “Does Mr. Lacey Amy actually expect sane and intelligent Canadians to believe that the War Office publishes its appeals in the English papers by way of a joke?” Anyone in England would smile at the indignation. It so happened that, under my direction, a qualified woman was at that moment going the rounds of the Government offices in response to the appeals, to prove their insincerity. I may tell her experiences some time.

While the newspapers were full of formal appeals, until at last they refused to publish them in face of such evident insincerity, thousands of women were offering their services in vain. And with the men it was the same. Substitution was the cry of the Government, and I have personal knowledge of many men of undoubted capacity who found it impossible to secure warwork, voluntary or pay. One, a little over military age, sons all killed in France, doing without effort his twenty miles a day, was refused by the recruiting offices, turned over to a Labor Exchange, and there informed there was nothing for him to do. Another approached twelve departments and was turned down. A citizen of fifty, with an income of $50,000 a year and abundant energy, was referred to a local Labor Exchange, one of those bodies formed to hoodwink the public. A man of sixty, famous for his strength, forty years experience in a large business, persisted until he was finally told that if he could get three others he could go to cutting down trees in Kent, although he had never handled an axe or a saw in his life. A ship’s plater, one of the most expert occupations in the world, discharged from the army for deafness and sunstroke at Mesopotamia, was sent out as a common laborer, although his previous employer pleaded for him. and the industry upon which England’s very life depends was languishing for workmen.

THE strange laxity of the late Government in the matter of interning Germans in residence in England is to some extent known in Canada. Not one German would have been put where he could do no harm had it not been for the public outcry, not one German business closed. Businesses that were announced as closed at the beginning of the war continued openly to operate under Government sanction for more than two years, not one being finally shut down until within the last few months when England almost rose in rebellion. The Home Secretary, Mr. Samuel, was concerned only in the defence of resident Germans. The ugly part of it was that the winding-up proceedings, continuing for more than two years in full operation, netted to the leading Government officials concerned a salary of $26 a day, and to the pettier clerk $24 a week. And some of these accountants were “winding-up” so many businesses that their receipts reached the staggering sum of $4,500 a day. Of course there was no rush about it

An official investigation—it is noticeable that the reports of these investigations are made public only now when the Government which ordered them to be made is out of power—has announced that there are 4,294 enemy aliens in prohibited areas in England with permits from the late Government.

Back of all this is merely delay, not treason: incapacity for appreciating the necessities of war, not deliberate carelessness. The English way of doing things is always irritatingly slow to a Canadian. Perhaps the medium would be happiest. I have in mind a so-called Canadian convalescent home opened in England under an English manager and an English matron. The simplest move required a fortnight’s deliberation—the purchase of a dish bowl, the making of the most obvious rules, the establishment of the simplest routine—and even a kitten’s name had to be taken under consideration for a couple of days. I can safely say that not a half dozen Canadians did not squirm under the deliberateness and procrastination of the late Government.

Officialdom was reeking with it. I am informed by Government contractors engaged on the manufacture of the very necessities of the struggle that they were unable to reach the ear of any responsible heads of the depart meats save through a series of underlings who were utterly incapable of grasping the points at issue. The pettiest Government official is unapproachable. A large shell order is delayed a week because some sudden hitch has to be straightened out through a long line of clerks and stenographers. “No gentleman could swallow his lunch in an hour,” is the snobbery and tradition that has been muddling the war. And eleven o’clock continued to be the opening hour for offices while the nation cried for haste—just as the large stores of London are still unprepared for business at ten in the morning.

The Government’s attacks on waste and extravagance were farcical in the extreme. Scarcely a thing was done save to plaster the city with huge signs: “It is bad form to dress extravagantly,” “Save gas, electric light, coal and petrol.” “Do not be extravagant at Christmas time.” The simplicity of a Government that would depend upon such measures is its own judgment.

THE Cabinet held up its hands in helplessness at the strife between the Admiralty and the Army. In the respective air services there was fierce competition in the open market for supplies, and the officers would not speak to each other. Long after the Admiralty had a waiting list for its ranks it refused to close its recruiting offices to young men who slunk away to them to escape the army, knowing that they would not be called upon for many months, if at all.

The entire muddle of the air service was unbroken until a few extremists, by making hysterical charges, roused the people. Zeppelins came and went with immunity, both here and at their aerodromes. A Board of Enquiry, presided over by the head of the service, spent its time browbeating the critics, so that only two or three of the more daring volunteered to give evidence. Another Board has now brought in a report that exposes some of the extreme criticisms while hitting the Government hard. At one time twenty-seven aeroplanes were consumed in the effort to get twelve over to France, and no enquiry was held. The very newest of England’s types of aeroplane was sent straight from England to a German aerodrome because it was entrusted, by telephoned orders from the War Office, to the care of a pilot and an observer who had never before flown to France. And wherein is the change? It is a strange coincidence that almost on the day my article, “Canada in English Eyes.” should have appeared in Saturday Night, the new Premier was announcing in the House in his first speech the co-operation of the Dominions in the councils of war. The Food Controller, whose appointment had been dallied with for weeks by the late Government, was named the transportation of supplies, deliberated upon for months by Asquith, was placed immediately in the hands of a competent shipping man. Labor whose every demand had been granted almost without quibble by the late Government, was firmly informed by the new Labor Minister, a Labor leader himself, that not a moment’s consideration would be given the demands of the striking boilermakers until they had resumed work; and they immediately took up their tools. Billboard appeal for economy became Government measures. Badges were withdrawn from semi-skilled and unskilled workers. The air services of both branches of war were amalgamated under one head.

And England is responding grandly, without a murmur, with a deep respect for the man who does things in wartime rather than deliberate how to present them in beautiful phrasing.

Playing with Food Prices

The Popular English Pastime: Playing with Food Prices

By Lacey Amy

From Saturday Night magazine, Toronto, Canada, 25 November 1916.

Digitized by Doug Frizzle, 25 September, 2017 for Stillwoods.Blogspot.Ca

Apology – This entry has been created from very old microfilm from a very old magazine. Certain areas of the graphic are unclear. I have endeavoured to reason at the missing parts of words. If there are errors, or if the meaning is not clear, it is my fault./drf

Scene I.

ONE chilly, but bright October afternoon on the Embankment below Charing Cross, I came on a curious crowd. It was in three parts, distinct in formation but connected in idea. On the pavement on the river side was a casual throng of idlers searching for entertainment on a holiday afternoon. Half a hundred yards distant, browsing in that air of detachment peculiar to their kind, was a squad of policemen, sixty or seventy strong.

The third portion, the centre of interest, was a medley of humanity splashed along the north side of the street, a mob, a clutter of Eastenders, made up of a dozen women, most of them with babies in their arms or in “prams” before them; half a dozen men who looked a bit sheepish but dogged, and a half hundred boys. I could imagine every street gamin within sight waving on his companions at the promise of a procession with a banner for everyone.

Without the banners it might have been only the incipience of a street riot, or a cinema queue. With the banners it became a tremendous Uplift Gathering, the Great English Public Speaking to its Legislators.

Everyone had a banner—most of the lads two—and a taxi load was left over after all hands were filled. “Down with the Milk Trust.” howled the placard of a seven year-old trust-buster. “My Father is in the Trenches. Give his Babies Milk,” pleaded a girl in Saturday-afternoon silk stockings and a keen eye for eligible young men. “Must Our Babies Starve?” demanded an aggressive female who, if she were not a spinster, was breaking all the laws of Nature. And red-nosed female hawkers bawled out “The Women’s Dreadnought.” Sylvia “Painkhoorst’s” mouthpiece.

It was very amusing. . . I went home and had milk as usual in my coffee.

Scene II.

TWO nights later. My coffee steamed before me and I reached mechanically for the sugar. It was not there. I rang, and my landlady entered apologetically. All afternoon she had gone from store to store begging a half pound of sugar. At ten groceries she had failed. My pet aversion, unsweetened coffee, faced me.

Ahem! It was coming too near home to be amusing. However, by Monday the Government would probably have released another supply.

Scene III.

WITH the evening paper propped against the cruet (there are still cruets in England) I was trying to while away my solitary meal without cursing the inconveniences of war. My landlady had just set before me a disturbingly small helping of mutton chop. Gradually it broke in through the Dobrudja muddle and the menace of temporary insufficiency that she had not left the room. I looked up, smiling invitation.

“I’m sorry, sir. but I believe I’ll ‘ave to ask a little mo’ for the meals.” She was stammering, twiddling with the other end of the tablecloth. “You see things have gone up so—twenty-five per cent since you came. (I wish the Government would stop issuing figures for the common people.) That bit of meat cost one and five to-day, an’ the herrin’ was fo’pence. An’ butter’s two shillings, an’ bread—”

Didn’t I know it? Hadn’t I been collecting prices for this article, with the result that I knew nothing short of stealing her supplies would enable her to feed me so well at such a price? Now I’m paying five shillings a week more—and the end has scarcely begun to begin.

No longer is it merely amusing, no longer merely temporarily inconvenient. The H. C. of L. (high cost of living) has become more than a literary treatise.

THE paraders were justified. Milk is now twelve cents a quart and gathering wind for another flight Also it is neither rich, nor good measure, not pasteurized, nor even clean. Newspapers and street agitation have effected nothing, despite the profits declared by some rural dairies on eight cent milk. Big companies have bought up the small, and forced those reluctant to sell by offering unasked to the farmer a price beyond what the farmer ever dreamed of.

The joke—in which the public does not share—is that the farmer learned quickly. His winter contracts now call for nine cents a quart, which means that twelve cents is waiting only until a new price list can be printed.

Sugar is not a sweet subject to contemplate. It will be recalled that the Government took over stocks and importations at the commencement of the war. The only visible results are that sugar is now doled out in homeopathic doses by an independent grocer, who sees in it the opportunity of securing new customers. It is still only twelve cents a pound—if you can get it.

In his most liberal moments, no grocer permits more than two pounds to leave his store with one order, and always other goods must be purchased. Usually the supply is a half pound at a time, and for that fifty cents to a dollar must be spent. Some co-operative societies have issued sugar tickets, a hole punched at each purchase.

And there are weeks when entire villages are sugarless. This summer no jam was put down in private houses, and all kinds of recipes are abroad for putting down fruit without sugar. I have tasted some of them and am living on other “sweets.”

Before the war sugar was four cents a pound. Beef has gone from twenty-one to thirty-four cents, butter from twenty-eight to fifty and more (most families arc content with margarine, a tasteless and perishable, but satisfactory, substitute at sixteen to twenty-four cents a pound), cheese from sixteen to twenty-eight; eggs from three cents to whatever you look able to pay, up to ten cents; and tea from forty to fifty-six cents for the cheap varieties. Bread is twenty-one cents a four-pound loaf, and at that is cheaper than in Toronto, I understand. Before the war it was eight cents. And it has but begun its climb. I see that on Saturday wheat rose eight per cent., making forty-five per cent. in four months. It is now higher than in the past hundred years. Potatoes are four cents a pound and six cents is promised.

Fish, a hand-to-mouth article of food in this insular country, fluctuates from day to day. On Saturday soles were seventy-eight cents a pound wholesale, and cod (with head and insides) twenty-seven cents. A dinner for three shillings or less takes no account of any fish but herring and haddock, with now and then a taste of hake or whiting. Many fish stores have closed owing to the uncertainty of supply.

Fruit and confectionery are luxuries of which to dream. In a store window the other day peaches were sixty cents apiece, nectarines thirty-six cents, small melons sixty cents, grapes a dollar-and-a-half a pound, pineapples eighty-four cents, pears thirty-six cents. Fruit of this kind is usually English, than which there is none better grown. For some time oranges were not on the market, owing to Government shipping regulations, but latterly these restrictions have been removed and fair oranges are five cents each. I have yet to see, even at seven or eight cents each, an apple that would be tempting to a Canadian at home.

English confectionery never did compete with the kind sold in a hundred shops in Toronto, either in price or quality. After a study of windows I cannot find the cheapest stuff under twenty-eight cents a pound—not equal to the fifteen cent varieties in Toronto—and bonbons are not eatable under a dollar a pound. The kind obtainable at fifty cents so readily in Toronto when I left is not to be had here at any price, but a fair imitation costs a dollar-and-a-half.

Coal (soft, mind you) is nine dollars a ton, and is held there only by the Government regulation of prices at the mine; the retailer asks what he pleases. Matches, once four cents a dozen boxes, are now eighteen cents. Tomatoes have never been below twelve cents this summer; and at that they do not take the place of the Canadian kind since they will not ripen in the open save in the extreme south. I have dared to mention here tomatoes ripening outside up at Fort Vermilion and in the Yukon, but comment like that slides off the contented Englishman.

I have begun to prepare for winter—and that to a Canadian brings visions of central heating. An ordinary coal-oil heater costs six dollars, and a small electric heater which I am sure I could purchase in Toronto at eight dollars was going to cost me thirty-eight dollars. For anything that savors of modernity it would pay one to visit America on a shopping expedition. It is lese majeste to introduce into England a new system of heating.

Restaurant meals that used to cost a dollar-and-a-half have been lowered in calibre and raised in price to a dollar-eighty-five cents; and I see that even the “dosser” (real English for “tramp”) is asked to pay sixteen cents instead of twelve for bed and breakfast at Lord Rowton’s lodging houses. So where is one to lay his head?

If you own a car—you probably don’t unless you are a military official, the Red Cross having requisitioned it or forced you to sell it in self defence—your gasoline asks for sixty-eight cents a gallon, with an additional twelve cents to the Government for letting you buy any.

Sixty-eight per cent. is the Government estimate of the increase in the cost of living since the war began.

Only threatened strikes on railways and in mines forced the Government finally to recognize conditions. But the realization of the necessity for action is but the first of a dozen steps before action is taken. Some of the Government’s best friends (and remember that the Government is coalition) are firm in the belief that a report will be made and stem measures taken—if the war lasts long enough.

Up to the present the only effect on prices is to boost them, except where a threatened investigation into the hoarded tea frightened the shippers into reducing prices. A Cabinet Minister two weeks ago stilled an incipient rebellion by stating that sugar was cheaper here than in America—in spite of the fact that sugar at that time was quoted at eight cents in New York and Toronto. One of the Government Departments went so far as to wave a reproving hand at the farmers. “Oh, fie’” it gently upbraided. “Now you really shouldn’t charge more than eight cents a quart for milk, you know. We may—um—we may have to consider doing something in the matter if you keep on “ A Wheat Commission merely bemoans the high price and is contradicted in its findings by everyone concerned. A Food Prices Commission could do little more than advise a meatless day a week. And the House towered to grand heights of patriotism in demanding of the munition workers—who are at it in the Woolwich Arsenal twelve hours a day—that they eschew holidays. After which it hastily packed its bag for a six weeks’ holiday of its own.

As this is being written the South Wales Miners’ Federation threaten to organize a great strike unless the Government takes full control of the food supplies; and the Scottish Mine Workers also make similar threats. Profiteering has passed all endurance in this country, but the trouble is that wealthy M. Ps. and members of the Lords are interested financially in almost every industry, and of course block action.

Hands Across the Sea! If we could only reach that ideal now there’d be one hand going empty and returning fulL Personally mine would return with Canadian bonbons, Canadian apples—and a whiff of Canadian sunlit air.

The people who are suffering most in England now, and who will continue to do so after the war, are those who live upon unearned incomes. A man with an income of $50,000 a year from his estates or stocks in England is receiving only $25,000 a year, as 40 per cent, goes to the Government and the other 10 per cent, is taken up by the increased cost of living.

The price of food, according to the Duke of Marlborough. who keeps up a big household, has increased 100 per cent, since the war began. A correspondent for a New York paper finds that eggs are ten cents apiece in London.

Regarding “The Canadian Incubus.”

Barrie. 14th November. 1916.

Editor. “Saturday Night ‘.

DEAR SIR,—I have read with amazement and considerable indignation an article entitled “The Canadian Incubus.” by Lacey Amy, in your issue of November 11th—amazement at some of the statements made in the article, and indignation at its unfair and ungenerous tone toward Canadian women in England. Will Mr. Amy give the name of the “great London paper” which stated that “hundreds of thousands of Canadian women have followed their husbands to England,” and also the date of the issue in which this statement appeared? And will he also give the address of any boarding house “in and around London.” where fifteen dollars a week is asked for “board and one semi-furnished room”? I should inspect such a boarding house, when I return to England and also to see the people who are foolish enough to pay such a price for such accommodation—although one would think that an Asylum for the Feeble Minded would be a more appropriate place of residence for them than a boarding house. I enclose the address of a house in the Bloomsbury district of London (well known to many Canadians for years past) where a comfortably furnished room with excellent board may be obtained for twenty-eight shillings per week. These are the rates which were asked and paid last August. I also enclose the address of an excellent boarding house in Bayswater, where the terms are thirty to thirty-two shillings a week. And there are many others “in and around London” equally good, and at equally reasonable rates.

As to the “sad Canadian housewife” who paid nine cents apiece for eggs, her place is certainly with the inmates of the fifteen dollars a week, semi-furnished boarding house. The “Weekly Times” of October 27th quotes the price of eggs in London as three shillings and sixpence a dozen, and yet the “sad Canadian housewife” was “forced” to pay at the rate of four and six a dozen at least a month earlier!

In a paragraph concerning work in England for Canadian women, the following astonishing statement appears: “Frankly, don’t believe the appeals which fill the English papers. As the editor of a London paper said to me: ‘That is only one of the War Office frolics’.” Does Mr. Lacey Amy actually expect sane and intelligent Canadians to believe that the War Office publishes appeals in the English papers by way of a joke? They are much more likely to think that it is the editor of the London paper who is indulging in a “frolic”—at the expense of the credulous Mr. Lacey Amy.

One impression given by this article is that London is overcrowded with Canadians. The plain fact is, that even “at such a camp centre as Folkestone.” where Canadians are far more numerous in proportion to the general population than in London, the “little Dominion” which they form consists of (leaving out the troops) a floating population of from five to six hundred scattered through Folkestone and the adjoining towns and villages of Bandgate, Hythe, Sandling, Cheriton, etc., where the general population amounts to at least forty thousand. It is evident that the presence of the Canadians cannot affect conditions very seriously, and the fact that accommodation can be obtained without the least trouble in Folkestone and its neighborhood shows that there is no overcrowding. As to London, the Canadians there are leas than the proverbial “drop in the bucket.”

Some Canadian papers have taken up the cry that Canadians (and especially Canadian women) are not wanted in England. During a stay of twenty months in England, ending last August, the writer neither heard nor read any word or hint of such a thing either from English people or in English papers One read with astonishment the articles which appeared in Canadian papers on this subject, and one felt that Canadians were being made rather ridiculous by this outcry over a matter of which English people were apparently unconscious, and on which English papers, so far as one could judge, were making no comment whatever. Mr. Lacey Amy says “The newspapers on both sides of the water have endeavored to interrupt the stream.” I would again ask for the name of any responsible English paper and the date of the issue in which such an endeavor was made, as it would be both interesting and instructive to read it.

While prices have gone up very much in England, they have also risen rapidly in Canada, and one finds on returning, that the cost of living is quite as high here as in England. While loaf sugar (but no other kind) was sometimes difficult to get, and eggs and butter were very dear (especially eggs), no scarcity of food was felt, and some foods (bacon, for instance) were cheaper than in Canada.

Mr. Lacey Amy’s estimate of Canadian women in England, and the work they are doing, is so obviously unfair and prejudiced that it should not carry weight with any fair-minded reader of “Saturday Night.” It can only arouse indignation in those who know of the quiet useful work which Is being done in hospitals, soldiers’ clubs and canteens and also for the Red Cross and Field Comforts, by numbers of Canadian women in England—women whose hearts are torn with anxiety, and who find their greatest comfort in doing what they can to help In every work for the comfort and well-being of the soldiers. If any impartial and fair-minded Canadian writer would take up the question of the work which is being done by Canadian women in England—investigating thoroughly and carefully, and reporting honestly and fairly—the story he could tell would be one to make Canadians proud of their women He could write of the Canadian Women’s Club of Folkestone, for instance—of their work on behalf of the tubercular patients at Moore Barracks Hospital; of the Connaught Club for soldiers, where all the cooking of good home-made Canadian dishes—sometimes for as many as a hundred soldiers in one day—is done by the women of the Canadian Club; of the comfortable rest and recreation room which they have furnished, and the free canteen which they are operating for the benefit of the soldiers passing through the Canadian Casualty Assembly Centre at Folkestone—men just out of hospital who are in need of rest and comfort; of their devoted work in the many hospitals of the Shorncliffe area, and of their many activities for the benefit of the soldiers, of which time fails me to tell. He could speak of the valuable work done by Lady Drummond and her devoted hand of helpers in the Information Department of the Canadian Red Cross Society—of the help they give to anxious and bereaved Canadians gathering information for them, and of the unfailing kindness and sympathy with which (hat help Is given, to which the present writer desires to bear grateful personal testimony.

Mr. Lacey Amy has no word of praise or appreciation for any of these things. He is like a man walking by a mountain road, who has no eyes for the heights around him, but sees only the muddy spots on the path. He would judge all Canadian women by the actions of a few idle and foolish ones. He would also have us believe that Canadian soldiers are churlish and ungrateful, but the experience of the “average hospital visitor” has been that they are invariably courteous and friendly, and grateful for any little kindness, as well as brave and cheerful and patient in suffering.

If Mr. Lacey Amy’s article was written as the result of his personal experience, one can only conclude that he has been equally unfortunate in his choice of a boarding-house, in the soldiers he has met, and in the type of Canadian woman he has encountered, even “when tea-ing(!) at the home of one of England’s illustrious titled men!”

Yours truly.

MARY GRASETT.

Editor’s Note:—Mr. Amy, being in England, the Editor will endeavor to answer a number of Mrs. Grasett’s questions. First of all the “great London newspaper” spoken of is the “Daily News,” the date of which I am unable to give, though the clipping was in my hands in October and was referred to in the Front Page of this journal in the issue of October 14. I pass the subject of boarding houses as I have had no personal knowledge, but as Mr. Amy has been in England some two years or more he probably spoke by the book. As for the price of food products, eggs were quoted this week in London at ten cents each. This fact may be substantiated from press reports published in the New York “Times.” and New York “Post.” However, Mr. Walter Runciman’s speech in Parliament last week, in which he notified the public that there would be no more flour made from the pure grain; that more stringent measures would have to be taken in respect to the consumption of sugar; that the State control of potatoes was imminent, and finally that the Government might be compelled to put food tickets into force, is, I think, sufficient answer as to what position England is in with regard to food supplies. As to the reference to “one of the War Office’s frolics.” this Editor does not know the source of this remark (it came from one of the largest and most influential London dailies), but without Mr. Amy’s approval could scarcely make it public. As for Mr. Amy’s general information on matters in England, would state that he is a trained and experienced journalist with London newspaper connections.

Readers of the “Women’s Section” of Saturday Night are well aware that this journal has always attempted to do justice to the war work of Canadian women in England, not only through the page written by Miss Mary Macleod Moore, our special correspondent in London, but also by means of many minor reports of such endeavor. Mr. Amy does not doubt the extent and excellence of Canadian women’s work in England—he mere emphasizes what overseas authorities have already complained of—the presence in England of too many inadequately employed Canadian women.