One of their first works was to buy up lots and dwellings in the
worst districts of Toronto, where miserable shanties and hovels
stood in fetid slums, as foul as any in London or Glasgow. The
hovels and shanties were then torn down, and respectable dwellings
erected in their stead. The unfortunate wretches, the victims of
drink, crime, or thriftlessness, who inhabited such places, were
not turned away to seek a fouler footing elsewhere, but were taken
in hand by the working-men on the committee, and were started
afresh in life with every encouragement. They were generally
permanently rescued from degradation, but if some fell back their
children were saved, and so the next generation was spared a family
of criminals. Montreal was next visited and the same thing done
there; attention was then turned to Quebec and Winnipeg. Successful
attempts were afterwards made to control the liquor traffic, not by
sudden prohibition, which always increased the evil, but by common
sense methods, necessarily somewhat slow, but sure. When the
Society had been at work ten years, there was a very perceptible
diminution in the amount of crime and smaller offences in all their
spheres of action. Police forces could be decreased, and a prison
here and there closed. This had a tendency to lessen the rates,
so the taxpayer became touched in his tenderest part--his pocket.
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