In response to the criticism that camp education for frontier workers was too costly, Fitzpatrick replied that, "Camp schools are cheaper than soldiers," (i.e. workers who deliberately restrict their output), "paupers, drunkards and criminals."28

Social Justice

Given his belief that it was illiteracy, and not exploitation by employers, that was responsible for the social problems associated with frontier work, it is not surprising that he saw the provision of education as "more urgent" a goal than reform of employment practices. Fitzpatrick wrote:

1. The gradual shortening of the hours of manual labour until at least an eight-hour day is reached, and--
2. What is more urgent than the need for a shorter day's labor, the means of self-improvement during what unemployed hours are even how available on the part of all who toil in solitude.29 (emphasis added)

Fitzpatrick and his colleagues in the Reading Camp Association vigourously campaigned for the second objective. They argued that "what these socially, intellectually and morally buried is charity, but social justice". 30 Fitzpatrick observed:

It is sometimes asked why should you make these men the objects of charity? It is because the much despised shanty-man, miner and navy contribute so largely to the production of the public revenue, because their backs are bent, their hands callous, their minds dwarfed and their spirits benighted, that the rich and poor alike are enabled to send their sons and daughters to the Public, the High School, College and University for a fraction of the cost. The city of Toronto alone has a population of about 225,000 persons. Out of the public revenue of Ontario, over one-third of which comes from woods and forests, there is spent approximately $400,000 annually for their education. There are about a quarter of a million men in the frontier camps of Canada upon whom there is spent less than $500 annually for educational purposes.31

However, even if it was the public at large which was mainly at fault for this unfair neglect of the education of frontier workers owners of the mines, lumber camps and railways that hired them shared some responsibility as well: