Graduation Address

"Special Convocation Address" (16 July 1936). (UA Case 69, Box 1)

The arrangement by which this meeting takes the form of both a convocation of the University of New Brunswick and a meeting of the Canadian Society of Technical Agriculturists is both wise and pleasant. It is a highly efficient method of conserving energy, and an excellent example of recognition of the joint interests of those who, in academic solitude, evolve wisdom, and of those who place it at the practical disposal of workers in the form of skill.

The honour paid me in admission to membership in this University is one which I appreciate very deeply. May I venture to try to contribute to you, in turn, a few thought of a business man not entirely unfamiliar with the interrelations of the academic world and the greater world outside the walls of such institutions as this?

The increasing wealth of the occidental world; the steady tendency to a breakdown of the barriers of caste and class; and the marvelous growth of the volume of recorded knowledge available for students have all, in recent times, set the world forward on a path of extension of educational efforts on a great scale.

Quite naturally this extension has been most rapid and most marked in those areas – such as North America – which, partly as the result of their great endowment of unused natural wealth, and partly because of the special energy of their people, have been the leaders in material progress. Quite naturally again the tendency of educational development has been, very largely, in the direction of the creation of institutions of learning specially equipped and adapted to provide adequate training in those physical sciences whose ambit has widened so greatly in the century of the Industrial Revolution.

Despite this there has been a definite and successful effort to maintain another type of institution. Partly because of a wise local pride, and partly because of an instinctive understanding of the true purpose of education, the growth of great centres of learning has not been permitted to prevent the continued life and growth of smaller institutions faithfully discharging their duty of keeping the lamp of learning alight.

I spoke just now of universities as places for the production of wisdom.

The test of the success of education in any country and in any period of human history will always be the same. A public life directed purely to the end of the expression of the high ideals of a free people, and a private life ruled by the pursuit of those simple virtues which the human conscience knows instinctively to be good – these are the objects for which we try to train our youth. To judge our success all that is necessary is to look around us.

As far as we have failed in our pursuit of these ample aims, it must be because we have failed in forming a correct philosophy of life. The qualities which are needed for success are virtue, wisdom and skill. Given those a people placed, as are the people of this nation, by nature in possession of wealth almost beyond limit can blame no external force for any failure which they experience.

It will, however, be a matter of much importance, in a correct philosophy of life, to know the order in which we should place virtue, wisdom and skill. By virtue I mean those moral qualities which both form a nation’s character and define the objects which it seeks and the methods which may be used to attain them. These ethical qualities must come first in the requirements for the success of people.

Wisdom must come next, for it is only from wisdom that we can learn how to carry out the commands of virtue by skill.

I believe, from what I see around me, that we must have erred on the rank in which we have placed skill, wisdom and virtue. We have placed skill before wisdom, and wisdom before virtue.

If this be the case then our system of education must have been wrong. It must have stressed too much the development of technique, and too little the development of reason.

If again this be right then the time has come to reverse the trend.

It is not for me to attempt to explore the question of virtue. That belongs in the field of leaders of ethical thought.

Let me attempt, however, to define a little what I mean by wisdom as opposed to skill–although I do not know what it will be possible to offer any definition of these two terms which will be clearer than these simple words.

Skill is the whole body of human behavior in its detailed attempts to adjust human actions to the situation of our race on the surface of our planet. The machinery of government; the organization of society; the economic system; the whole corpus of the technique of production and distribution–these are all matters of skill. It is the increase in human skill which makes the society of our time so different from the society of earlier days.

Some village in the interior of China, or some tribe in those portions of Africa yet untouched to any extent by our occidental civilization, will carry on its functions of production and distribution today almost exactly as it did many centuries ago. The skill of that community has remained unchanged.

In the occidental world the whole patter of life has changed in the past century. Improvements in skill have altered the functions of government; the relations of class to class; and the daily life of every human being.

Wisdom is merely the choice of the objectives which our society holds up for attainment. Can we speak as surely of our advance in this field?

Take for example such invention as that of aviation. Skill has developed it until this invention has lessened the diameter of the world, and upset our entire thought of distance as a factor in our life. What has wisdom contributed in this respect? For what purpose have we developed aviation and learned this trick of shortening distance? Is it for the purpose of spreading, to those areas of the world which do not yet possess them, any moral and intellectual blessing which may have been obtained? Is it for the purpose of adding only to material wealth? Or–worst of all–is it merely to remove the difficulties which distance imposes in war, and to take down the defences which nations set up against nations?

That choice is not a matter of skill. It is a question of wisdom.

I might say the same thing of the radio, of moving pictures, and of a dozen other manifestations of human skill. We all must realize what they mean in potentialities for the change of human society. Have we any clear idea of directing these new forces to any general objective? Have we even decided the objective to which they should be directed?

Yet, there never was a time when wisdom was so badly needed. The very development of skill imposes on us a need of added wisdom such as our forefathers could never have foreseen.

We have aviation, the radio, and moving pictures. A malevolent ruler can use his airplanes for destruction. The radio can bring to every home the words of any demagogue, or preacher of destruction. Moving pictures can mould–and even mar–the taste and ambitions of all our youth. Have we considered whether we are wise enough even to know the objectives for which these instruments of skill can be used?

There have been, in recent years, those who have actually attempted to decry the increase in human skill. An eminent prelate not long ago suggested a holiday for science. All that he meant was that the human race should cease its exploitation of the powers of nature because human wisdom was not great enough to use with intelligence the increase in human power which so results. To me that is the final doctrine of pessimism. The invention of the stone hatchet or the crossbow place in human hands powers of death and destruction which human beings had never possessed before. Yet the human race learned to use to these things and learned to use them for the advancement of the race.

It is a basic part of faith in humanity that we should believe that human beings can still learn to use new powers for good and not for evil.

There can be nothing more obvious than that, if institutions of learning are of any use at all, they will play a major role in deciding the choice of our objectives–in a word, a major role in forming the wisdom of the human race. They can only do this successfully if they encourage in their members the study and exploration of the fields of ethics and of reason.

It is precisely in these fields that the smaller institutions of learning have their great advantage. It is precisely in these fields that lack of great endowments and magnificent laboratories is least felt. These are precisely the fields adapted for the work of scholars more interested in learning than in technique. This is precisely the field where the type of institution such as this provides no small advantage.

The shocks and stresses of the past few years have been so serious that we have had but little time to spare in contemplation of the possibility that they will being good as well as evil. The truth of this, however, is beyond question. We should be able to learn from the events of the recent past the errors which we have made in planning our system of society. In the field of education I am convinced that we can already see that we erred in our concentration of effort on the development of skill, without a sufficient realization of the added wisdom which the use of added skill requires.

I have faith enough in human nature to believe that we shall learn this lesson and apply it, and that the educational system of this country will increasingly devote its efforts to the increase of wisdom. In such a plan institutions such as this, which has so greatly honoured me today, can take the lead.

Turning now to address particularly the members of the Canadian Society of Technical Agriculturists, may I say that I know of no class of men in whom the possession of wisdom can be of more direct use to their fellow beings and to society at large?

Your Society occupies an important place in the life of our country. It has been my privilege from time to time to testify to the fundamental importance of agriculture in the Canadian economy. If this view be justified then there can be no group of men more important to Canada than those whose duty it is to improve the technique of our basic industry.

Will you permit me to offer you a few thoughts concerning the importance of adding to your advice to our farmers on purely technical questions some counsels which you may draw from the wisdom which our institutions of learning can provide?

The world–and Canada with the rest of it–is passing through a phase which will be of tremendous interest to historians in the future, even if it be sometimes distinctly unpleasant to us who are making and living the history of the times. In ten years we have seen the peak of the greatest boom the world has ever known, and the depths of a depression made deeper still by its contrast with the short-lives period of prosperity which preceded it.

It is not my intention today to attempt a lecture on the causes and origins of booms and depressions. As far back as history goes we find alternating periods of good business and bad business, and, as the world has become increasingly complex, it has become increasingly important to us to foresee booms and depressions.

You will perhaps forgive me for the somewhat metaphysical suggestion that booms and depressions, like any other peaks and valleys, can only be recognized by the contrasts in levels which they present. A long enough boom becomes our idea of the normal, and a long enough depression would equally be accepted as likely to be permanent.

Very wisely, in my opinion, we have refused to accept the conditions of the last few years as being permanent. This is, of course, a mere assertion of faith, but faith is what makes the world move.

Despite this faith, it is highly important for us to try to find the real reasons for booms and depressions. Perhaps, in time to come, we may learn the really fundamental laws which govern these alternations of business volume. That will be a most important bit of progress, because we are far from that stage if economic knowledge today.

Sofar, indeed, are we from understanding the case of booms and depressions that distinguished American scientist has recently, with every appearance of seriousness, suggested that there is a peculiar correspondence between changes in business volume and the changes in the activity of sun spots.

Without being quite prepared to accept this solution of the problem, I may be permitted to say that it is not a bit more unreal than some other explanations which have been offered.

The reason for inflicting these philosophical remarks upon you is that they are the confession of a business man that he finds the world extremely puzzling. On the success of business men in forecasting the future depends very largely the success of the undertakings which they direct, and it is only when business men as a whole are foreseeing the future with reasonable accuracy that we can have anything approaching economic stability and general prosperity.

The admitted inefficiency with which we carry out this sort of forecasting today is the reason most usually given for the reconstruction of our society by those who believe in something called a "planned economy". That theory is not one which appeals to me. In the first place I find it unconvincing that we should hope for improvement as a result of concentrating the direction of business in the hands of a small group of men who must, in the end, be far wiser and far more foreseeing than are the business men of the world today if their direction of the nation’s activities as a whole is to be more competent that the direction of individual businesses by specialists in those industries has so proved to be.

I might give you a rather clear example on this point, drawn from an article which I recently read. In the crop years 1928-29 and 1930-31 Russia exported a total of 179 million bushels of wheat. In the four years following Russia exported a total of only 83 million bushels of wheat. Investigation would seem to prove that the heavy exports of the first two years listed were not actually justified, and it is in fact that they were followed by a serious shortage of foodstuffs in Russia.

Indeed there was a famine which cost many lives.

It is impossible to come to any other conclusion than that the famine was the direct result of mistake calculations on the part of those who were planning the economy of a great nation. Let me say quite clearly that I do not quote these facts in any spirit of criticism of the men who are trying to improve the economic and social conditions of Russia. All that I find in them is the lesson of added difficulty of conducting a "planned economy" as compared with our simpler task of conducting an economy which is only partly planned. I suspect that, had Russia been selling wheat through the ordinary channels of competitive trade, less would have been exported.

My other reason for doubting the possibility of success for "planned economy" is that agriculture is the source of the world’s greatest annual production of wealth. It is surely not necessary for me to argue to this audience that a "planned economy" can do but little to influence any country’s production of farm products in any year. The factor of weather still remains so dominant that with all that you can contribute to the aid of the farmer in the way of science he will still remain little more certain concerning the size of his output that he ever was. There is something to me particularly unreal in the history of a "planned economy" which cannot plan effectively for the largest and, economically, the most important group of producers.

This is not a doctrine of "stand pat", or of despair. It is not a confession that there is nothing that can be done to improve agriculture or the lot of those who practice it. Better seed, better cultural methods, better livestock, and better preparation of produce for market will, over a term of years, repay the farmer whether Providence sends him good weather or not. Your efforts to preach these truths, and to instruct the farmer in their application, have been brilliantly successful, and will continue so to be.

Beyond that field, however, there lies a far wider field of counsel to farmers which, to me at any rate, seems to lie almost fallow, or at best to have been but little cultivated.

In recent years the world seems to have become obsessed with a fear that even ordinary industry on the part of its agriculturists is dangerous because of the fear of agricultural overproduction. I say "the world", but, in actual fact, this fear is strictly confined to a group of the wealthier nations of the world. No one has as yet urged that the underfed million of Asia are in danger of being oversupplied with food, and even in the case of many millions of men and women in Western nations the suggestion that a surplus of food existed would be received with angry amusement.

If overproduction of food exists at all, in a world in which hundreds of millions of people never obtain enough to satisfy their bare physical needs, it must be overproduction in a very limited sense. It must be production in excess of the ability of our system of society to exchange, for the food which the farmer produces, the goods and services which other have to offer.

I say quite frankly that even this limited form of overproduction does not seem to me to exist. Perhaps the product which is most accessible to full statistical study is wheat. For some years I have found myself among a small minority who doubted the adequacy of the evidence produced to prove world overproduction of this staple grain. The trend of recent events confirms me in this belief. World stocks of wheat today do not appear to be any greater than they were in the years before this bogey of overproduction sprang up, although the populations of the world is much larger now that it was in, say, 1927.

Against this there will be quoted the statement that world consumption of wheat tends to fall as a result of changes in dietary habits. I do not deny that there may be some truth in this, but I doubt if it is quite safe to regard this tendency as firmly and permanently established on the limited evidence so far produced.

It is also suggested that the increasing difficulties of international exchange make it impossible for nations which want wheat to buy it. I doubt this statement also, despite complete readiness to admit that international commerce is badly hampered by excessive nationalism. Examination of trade statistics shows me, to take but one example, that Germany is buying well over a billion dollars worth of goods abroad annually; France over a billion and a half dollars; Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands over half a billion each. Since no import can be so vital to a nation as its basic foodstuffs, I doubt whether we have yet reached the point in international commerce where the trade in wheat cannot be carried on because of lack of money to facilitate it.

Unpleasant as is the fact that many of these nations have deliberately attempted to make themselves to some extent independent of imports of wheat, I believe that it is a grave error to assume that this process must or will continue.

I should suggest that one of the outstanding reasons for any difficulties in selling wheat abroad has been the fact that prices for wheat have fallen too rapidly in proportion to the prices of the goods and services for which that wheat is exchanged. The countries which are normally large importers of wheat are also normally exporters of manufactured goods and of services. When such countries are able to purchase their requirements of wheat with a much decreased volume of goods and services, the advantage so obtained is apt to be accompanied by unemployment and a disruption of established economic systems. This disruption may go so far as to condemn to unemployment, and this to inability to buy any wheat, men and women who would be employed and able to consume had the relation between food prices and those of other commodities and services remained more favourable.

Indeed, I am inclined to believe that any temporary condition of surplus in the wheat market in recent years has been gravely accentuated by unnecessary alarm. This fear has tended to drive the price of wheat to levels where this staple commodity of international commerce cannot play its accustomed part in stimulating the production and sale of complementary commodities and services.

In fact, I can conceive of nothing more likely to damage the economic system of the modern world that a condition of lack of confidence which would cause the prices of foodstuffs to fall too rapidly in comparison with the prices of other goods and services.

For this reason, I urge upon you the most careful and patient examination of the facts in this important field. However successful you may be in teaching farmers how to produce, you are not doing your whole duty if you permit their interests to be exposed to unnecessary damage resulting from what I believe to be the wholly unsound theory of agricultural overproduction.

I know that there is a not unimportant school of though which holds that all price declines are desirable as tending to encourage economic recovery. Even those who hold this faith, however, must realize that price declines for the product of one important group of the economic system exceeding the declines for other groups of products cannot be desirable. It seems to me quite obvious that this has been the case with the products of agriculture in recent years, and, as far as this unbalanced condition has resulted from unnecessary alarm over agricultural overproduction, I believe that it is in your power and in to scope of your duty to attempt to correct any misconceptions.

There is another field in which I believe much useful work can be done. There is too much of a tendency to weigh the profits of agriculture in money. In our modern industrial society money is an obvious method of comparing the reward which various individuals and classes obtain from their labour and investment. The events of the past few years should demonstrate quite clearly that money is not quite adequate as a measure. Our society has been so disturbed that it has become evident that stability of even small earnings may be more important than large earnings. The cry most often heard today is that what men want is security. I suggest to you that nowhere will security be found so easily and so certainly as in the countryside, and in the application of man’s labour to the good earth. There can be no reason why those who are to guide the farmer in his work should not at the same time try to guide his mind to a fuller appreciation of this fact.

Finally, there is a field of effort which daily assumes increasing importance. We are being told on all sides that we must accept a permanent tendency to increasing direction of men’s lives by the state. I shall leave to others the task of warning our people that with the benefits which may come from this there must be weighed the loss of liberty which is an essential part of this theory. As a business man, and not a political philosopher, I prefer to focus my own attention on the reality of the benefits or disadvantages which come from an increased amount of interference by the state in business.

Our system of society is so complex that it may be difficult for a farmer in the peaceful countryside to realize quite fully that a tax imposed on a great industrial or financial corporation in a distant city be partly paid by him. The fact still remains.

The material rewards of a farmer’s labour must be measured, to no inconsiderable degree, in the volume of goods and services produced by others to which that labour will entitle him. He produces the food which all others consume. The farmers of Canada, from their labour, feed all the other citizens of the country. They feed all who live on inherited wealth; all who direct the affairs of business institutions; all employees of public authorities; and all the unemployed–as well as all those directly engaged in the production of the goods and services which farmers use. It is of vital importance to their interests that the total production of good and services by others for the use of farmers should be as great as possible, and as efficient as it can be.

They should be very broadminded in approaching this problem. They should recognize that an officer of a department of agriculture; a research worker in science in a university; a bank president; and an editorial writer in a newspaper may be contributing just as really goods and services available to farmers for their use as are the actual workers in a factory making agricultural implements. The vital truth that agriculture is our basic industry carries with it the fact that all production of goods and services by others aids the farmer.

On the other hand they should realize quite clearly that every individual in this country who, as a result of his own laziness, or of the lack of efficiency in our system, is not directly or indirectly adding to the wealth of the world is being fed by farmers without making any return.

Private business cannot support many of these idlers. Competition is keen, and the private institutions which attempts to carry idlers on its payroll, or to allow inefficient methods to continue in its affairs, will soon find itself unable to offer its good and services cheaply enough for them to find a sale in competition with those of more efficient enterprises.

The operations of governments and other public authorities which posses the power to tax have not this stimulus to efficiency. They can include provision to keep men in idleness, or working most inefficiently, and can still, by the taxing power, force the farmers of this country to feed these people without any real return.

I know quite well that farmers will receive money for all goods which they produce and sell, regardless of their ultimate consumption. It still remains a fact that those who consume these goods without returning goods and services in exchange are being fed without any true return to the farmer.

Our indirect methods of taxation can easily obscure this fact, since the contribution made by farmers to the support of idle or useless men is not made in a direct levy of goods or money, but is in the form of lower prices for what the farmers sells, or higher prices for what he buys. A sales tax imposed on something produced in a city a thousand miles away; an income tax imposed on the yield of capital invested in a distant factory; excessive taxes imposed on the houses in which there live the workers who produce goods for farmers – all of these may affect, very directly, the profit gained by farmers who do not know that these taxes even exist.

It is thus of the deepest importance that the farmers of this country, however willing they may be to see our public authorities increase the scope if their functions, should remember that this is paid for by them. If, as a result, they are enabled so to increase the price of what they sell, or to decrease the price of what they buy, as to more than compensate for the added indirect taxation which tends to decrease the price of their produce and to increase the price of their purchases, these added functions of public authorities are positively beneficial. If, on the other hand, the taxation imposed to support these added public services exceeds the benefits obtained, then, although he may not know that he is paying these taxes, the farmer is hurt.

My own belief is that in recent years we have been inclined in this country to increase the scope of our public services, and the expenditures of our public authorities, far too rapidly. It is my belief that we have been going through a phase of public extravagance which would never have occurred had our people realized the simple truth that public authorities have no money except that which they can obtain by direct of indirect taxation.

I offer this question of public finance to you who are the advisers of farmers, as one deserving of your best attention.

No one can appreciate more fully than I do the services which the members of your Society can render to the farmers of Canada in the field of improved technical methods of production. It is, however, pointless to teach men to produce more unless this added production will bring with it at least a reasonable prospect of reasonable increase in reward. If this added production is to be sold at prices depressed unduly by false alarms, or if this added production is to be taken to feed others who will return no reward in goods or services for it–then it is difficult to see why the added skill and labour should be used.

Above all, however, to invent and propagate methods of increasing production will be useless, unless the farmers of this country believe that their occupation is one which offers reasonable reward and fair security to this generation, and a prospect justifying them in urging their children to follow in their footsteps.

It is because I believe in farmers and in farming, and because I believe that you who are the advisers of farmers constitute one of the most important professions in this country that I venture to urge upon you how important it is to the future of Canada that your advice and counsel should be constantly expanded in its scope, and should cover fields more extensive than even the important one of steady improvement in agricultural technique.

In agriculture, as elsewhere, we must face the fact that skill can only be useful to the human race when it is the servant of wisdom. A community of farmers engaged in endeavouring to improve and increase their production cannot be aided solely by advice concerning the improvement of their skill. Their long term plans – which are very essentially the long term plans of our society – must be the product of wisdom. It is no empty platitude to remind you that wisdom is not the result of the accumulation of information, but that of the ability to reason. May I suggest this as a proper subject of thought to the members of both the societies which have been good enough to invite me to address them today?