Suchergebnisse

Canada has suffered throughout her history by the comparison of her rate of progress with that of the United States. Almost every traveler to this continent during the past two or more centuries has found occasion to comment on the apparent difference in the degree of economic prosperity on the two sides of the border. Lord Durham was compelled to recognize this difference as one of the underlying causes of political disaffection in the country. Local observers joined in deploring the failure of Canada to keep pace economically with the United States. Haliburton, expressing his views through his fictitious Yankee clockmaker, was scathing in his denunciation of the lack of industry and business imagination among his fellow Nova Scotians. Canadians today, with a similarly critical insight into the economic state of their country, are but little less inclined to point out the unfavorable comparison it makes with the neighbor to the south. The belief persists that the really enterprising Canadian must cross the border if he is to realize his fullest ambitions.

There is probably no other form of organized group life in the Canadian community which has been more unstable than the organization of religion. The history of Protestantism in the country is very largely a history of church unions and sectarian divisions. If account were taken of the activities of the Jesuit Order in New France, of the defection at various times of many Catholics to Protestant religious sects, and of recent anti-clerical movements in the province of Quebec and among the Catholic immigrant population in Western Canada, the same would be found to be true in a general way of Catholic development in the country.The dream of the universal church, of the church which would unite all nations and all classes, has never been fully realized, in Canada as elsewhere in the Western World. Efforts to accomplish such an object, by the establishment of a state church, by the union of separate religious bodies, or by the initiation of a new religious movement which would transcend all other religious groups have invariably failed in face of the expression of strong separatist forces in religious organization. Out of every such effort to create an all-embracing religious body in the community have come new movements of religious protest, the religious sect.On the other hand, the sect form of religious organization has proved equally unstable. The pure sect, the religious group organized exclusively in terms of the other-worldly or spiritual interests of its members, has never been more than an idealistic conception of religious organization finding expression in movements of religious reform at various times. The necessity of existing in a worldly society has led religious sects from the very beginning to accept to some extent a worldly outlook. Where they have not succeeded in developing into churches, or at any rate into types of religious organization accommodated to the secular community, they have perished. Almost from the moment of their inception, they have been forced to make such a choice between social accommodation or extinction.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest the close relationship between economic development and movements of moral reform in Canada. From the beginning of Canadian history, organized attempts have been made to control such problems as intemperance, crime, gambling, juvenile delinquency, sexual promiscuity, and prostitution. These movements were indicative of a condition of disintegration of the mores, and their role was that of establishing a new moral code to govern behaviour. But disturbances which resulted in the breakdown of moral standards extended throughout the range of society, and affected the organization of economic and political life as well. Movements of moral reform, like those of an economic or political (or purely religious or cultural) character, were products of economic expansion.This fact becomes evident if consideration is given to the broad features of the social development of Canada. Beginning with the establishment of the fishing industry in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canadian development may be represented in terms of a series of stages marked by the emergence of new areas or forms of economic exploitation. The expansion of economic life involved new accommodations in economic, political, and social institutions, and the points of greatest social disturbance were to be found where the impacts of the new techniques of production were most felt. It was within these interstitial areas of social organization, where the traditional culture came in conflict with new economic developments, that movements of reform took their rise.