322 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



more particularly in so far as women and children are concerned. 

 In his speech introducing the measure the Dominion Minister of 

 Agriculture said : " There can be no health in the cities without 

 corresponding health in the country. To put it in George W. 

 Russell's words : ' Our princes and captains of industry with all 

 that they control — the high-built factories and titanic mills — might 

 all disappear without man disappearing ; but cut away man from 

 the fields and fruits of the earth, and in six months there will be 

 silence in the streets.' We, then, in this Parliament, who are making 

 the laws of the nation, may well ask ourselves in what way can we 

 best solve these questions of great national concern ? It will not be 

 denied that the safeguarding of the productive classes is a matter 

 of primary and fundamental importance to the nation, but in regard 

 to the agricultural life of our country it is not alone the betterment 

 of economic conditions that we should aim at, but something finer — 

 the creation of a rural civilisation which will at once ensure fuller 

 and happier fife to those in its midst, and prove a source and fount 

 of strength to the State itself." 



The Act accordingly places the women's institute movement under 

 the protective care of the several departments of agriculture, and 

 allots in aid of the formation of such — a truly legitimate object, as 

 being purely educational — certain funds which spell up in general 

 to about 7,000 or 7,500 dollars allotted to each province. Only 

 Ontario, being the most active province, has recently taken as much 

 as 16,000 dollars. The movement had spread rapidly and widely 

 before, more particularly in Ontario. Other provinces, however, 

 likewise had made it their own, and the United States had followed 

 suit appreciatingly — as, among other evidences, Mr. John Hamilton's 

 report to the International Congress at Brussels of 1910 shows. By 

 1918 the province of Ontario numbered about 900 women's institutes 

 with collectively about 30,000 members, and the movement has 

 spread not a little since. 



The effect of the action of women's institutes is everywhere 

 described as most happy — in Canada, of course, as the parent 

 country, in which, moreover, the civilising action of women's 

 institutes is effectively supported by Junior Farmers' Improvement 

 Associations and such organisations as, specifically in Quebec Pro- 

 vince, the Cercles de Jeunes Fermieres and Convent Schools leading 

 the way, as very strikingly so. A new elevating social spirit has 

 been infused into farm life, homes have grown more comfortable 

 and attractive, and a new stimulus has been given to rural education. 

 We see in our own country how much even a little lightening of the 



