Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

As a matter of course, through the force of his personality and without apparent effort, he became leader of the minority in the New Brunswick House, and this minority he changed from weakness to strength. His personal following grew so steadily that in 1883 the majority was defeated and Mr. Blair became Premier of the Province. In three general elections, those of 1886, 1890 and 1894, his leadership was sustained. “By this time,” remarked a friend of his to me, “Blair was the whole thing in the Province of New Brunswick.”

However this may have been, it is true that Mr. Blair had become a figure of national prominence. Long before this he had attracted the attention of Sir Wilfrid Laurier, and when the latter became Premier of the Dominion in 1896 he made Mr. Blair a member of his Cabinet, appointing him to the important place of Minister of Railways and Canals.

It was in this position that he acquired the mastery of railroad problems that has made him Canada’s leading authority on transportation. In 1903, because he disagreed with the governmental powers on the subject of the projected Grand Trunk Pacific line across the continent, he resigned his portfolio.

But it very soon became evident that Mr. Blair was a man with whose services it was difficult to dispense. For the purpose of regulating the railroads in their relations with the public more specifically than had been possible by the Ministry of Railways and Canals a Board of Railway Commissioners was provided for by Parliament early in 1904. Mr. Blair had been very active in advocating the organization of the committee, and it was obvious that there was no man in Canada who could approach him in fitness for the place of chairman. Yet his opposition to the government in its great scheme for the new transcontinental road was a very formidable objection to his selection. This difficulty caused much hesitation on the part of the ruling spirits, but in the end it was decided that the Government could not get along without Mr. Blair, and so he was appointed chairman of the committee. After a few months of very successful work he resigned his place, an act which threw the party in power into a state of astonishment and consternation.

In his office in Ottawa I called upon Mr. Blair, and was at once impressed with what might be called his bigness. His face, the lower part of which is covered with the luxuriant growth of beard which is characteristic of the Scotchman, is broad. His forehead is high and wide. His eyes are unusually large. He speaks slowly, and every word has weight.

If one were to make a military comparison it might be said that he has much more of the blunt strength of the cannon than of the glittering sharpness of the sword. And yet this military simile, except at times of heated debate in the House of Parliament, or when his indignation is aroused, is not a fair one, for no man’s ordinary manner is more quiet and benign. His energy is not obtrusive, nor of the kind called nervous. It seems to have a far deeper source than this. The truth is, Mr. Blair impressed me as possessing more of the equipment of the scholar and philosopher than of the lawyer giving and parrying quick thrusts in court litigation, or of the politician devising ways and means to hold and increase his power. It is difficult to imagine him indulging in airy flights of eloquence calculated to arouse the admiration of the crowd. Indeed, he never indulges in what is ordinarily called oratory. He depends for effectiveness in his speeches upon the force of fact and logic, with which in Parliament he has shattered numerous soaring bubbles of forensic sentiment.

“I don’t care to talk about myself,” he remarked to me. “Those good friends of mine who differ with me on matters of public policy are doing that. But I have no objection to saying something on the topic of success, although the subject is so vital and has such an intimate relationship to a young man’s ambitions and career that I should have liked to have a little time to consider it.

“I will say, however, that I have been strongly impressed within very recent times with the fact that it is no longer necessary for young Canadians to go to the United States to seek their success. At one time there were much greater opportunities for them there than here, and Canada lost many of her best minds and most promising youths. Not a few of these have achieved distinction in the States, and many young Canadians, inspired by their example, are still seeking fame and fortune across the border. But a larger number are now coming in this direction. The tide has turned. Men with capital, in money or in brains, are beginning to realize that in this twentieth century Canada is the land of opportunities.

“Even in the profession of law, which feels the effect of new conditions rather less quickly than do commercial pursuits, there has been a marked advance toward more business and larger fees. For electrical, mechanical and civil engineers there is more and more work in Canada because of the constant installation of new manufacturing plants and the extension of the railway systems.

“In the field of railroad construction in particular, on account of the necessity of thousands of miles more of track in the new territory which is being opened up, there will be a great deal of work for young men within the next few years. I do not myself believe that it is necessary to build new lines with the haste thought advisable in some quarters, but it is inevitable that sooner or later the country will be covered by a network of railroads. All this railway building and the resulting development of new communities will mean, of course, business and professional openings for a great number of energetic men.

“This will be especially true of our immense Northwest, which is virtually a new country of a wonderful productivity in grain and minerals, and of a vastness in territory difficult to imagine. In the flourishing little city of Edmonton, in the province of Alberta, I happened to meet a man not long ago who was installing mills for the grinding of wheat in the territory to the north, and asked him as to the location of the most northerly mill that he was building. In reply he mentioned a place which, to my astonishment, was over twelve hundred miles north of Edmonton. From this you will see that there are wheat fields nearly sixteen hundred miles north of the boundary line between Canada and the United States.

“The climate here is tempered by the winds which come through the passes of the Rocky Mountains from the warm Japanese current of the Pacific. This makes it possible to grow wheat in the region just east of the Rockies at a latitude much higher than in the section farther east, where the balmy winds do not reach, but the fact that there are wheat fields sixteen hundred miles north of the border will give you an idea of the marvelous extent of the wheat growing country of northwestern Canada.

“I have not the slightest doubt that in the course of the next twenty-five years a great commonwealth will have been developed here, and this means that many thousands of young men who are honest and energetic and wide awake enough to see and seize their chances will acquire comfortable competencies for themselves and families. Some will unquestionably make large fortunes.

“I do not, however, regard the accumulation of a great deal of money as a criterion of success. I think that a man who has been able to build for himself a comfortable home, presided over by a good wife and enlivened with the presence of a moderate number of children, is apt to be far more content with his lot than the man who must carry the burden of a great fortune.

“In the Northwest the conditions will not be such as to enable a man to amass the fabulous wealth which has marked the industrial development of the United States. For one thing, we are so regulating our railroads in their relations to the public that it will be quite impossible for favored shippers to obtain the preferences in freight rates which, in the United States, have been the chief source of the menacing wealth of certain conspicuous capitalists.

“To make impossible all discrimination in rates on the part of railroads has been one of my principal cares in the discharge of my official duties as Minister of Railways and as Chairman of the Railway Commission. If it can be truthfully said that I have accomplished something in this direction I shall feel that my labors have not been in vain.”

“What,” I inquired, “do you consider the chief requisite of success in political life?”

Mr. Blair paused, and turned his eyes reflectively toward the window. “This is a difficult question,” he answered slowly. “There are, of course, numerous qualities that combine to give a man success in politics as in any other pursuit. But I am sure that the prime essential of the man who is ambitious to hold any lasting influence in political life is character.

“If he possesses character he is bound to gain and maintain the respect, not only of his friends, but even of his enemies, and will be able to keep himself afloat on the tempestuous sea of politics long after those who have not been able to resist the temptations of a political career have been engulfed.

“In Canada the political life carries with it no great financial rewards. The young man who enters politics and devotes himself zealously to affairs of state must not expect affluence. If his aim in life is to acquire riches he should by all means keep clear of the political arena until, at least, he has made his success in business.”

In his administration in the office of Minister of Railways and of Chairman of the Railway Commission, Mr. Blair showed a pronounced simplicity and unconventionality in his methods. His aim being to accomplish as much as possible, he went straight to the mark, with little regard for formality or red tape. Many times, in his work of railway supervision, he has traversed the length and breadth of Canada, preferring to see conditions for himself rather than to judge of them on hearsay evidence. A single episode may be given as characteristic of his manner of obtaining results. There had been numerous complaints about the dangers of a certain crossing on one of the railways. Some of these complaints had been sent to the office of the Commission, but in the ordinary routine of business some time would have elapsed before action upon them could be taken. Meanwhile the railroad was doing nothing in the matter, and the lives of many children were daily in danger. Mr. Blair, however, had heard unofficially of the crossing. One day he happened to meet on a train the superintendent of the road in question. The train was approaching the dangerous place, when Mr. Blair suddenly remarked to the superintendent: “By the way, Mr. ——, I have heard that you have a bad crossing on the line not far from here. Let us get out and take a look at it.”

The superintendent acquiesced, and when the crossing was reached the train was stopped and the two gentlemen alighted. For a few moments they surveyed the woods that concealed the approach of trains and the other conditions which made the crossing hazardous.

“I think we have seen enough, Mr. ——,” remarked the Chairman. When they had resumed their seats in the car he said, “Now, see here, it is just as obvious to you as it is to me that this place should at once be made safer. It can be done easily. I wish you would interest yourself personally in the matter.” Within a day or two a gang of workmen had made the crossing safe.

LI

A Distinguished Educator has Found Contentment in the Simple Life.

“MY life has been very quiet,” said Dr. James Loudon, president of the University of Toronto, which is the largest educational institution in Canada. “When I was graduated from this University in the early sixties I became associated with it as an instructor, and have never had any other professional connection.

“My birthplace was the city of Toronto, and my parents, like those of so many people in this province of Ontario, were Scotch. I might remark, parenthetically, that I think the infant that opens its eyes upon the world with Scotch blood in its veins has already made a pretty fair start in life. The typical Scotchman is shrewd and patient, and is the fortunate possessor of that sense of humor which does so much to smooth the way, both for himself and for those about him, and is so conducive to a sane philosophy. Patience, I have always thought, is a particularly valuable asset for the man who desires steady progress in his life.”

“The truth of this is exemplified in your own career,” I suggested.

“Perhaps so,” replied Dr. Loudon. “I well remember Toronto when it was a comparative village, and I have seen it develop into the present brisk and impressive city. I remember, too, our University when its attendance was very small, and I have seen it steadily expand until now it has over twenty-five hundred students, and its influence has become widespread. I myself have been carried up with the general growth. For many years I was professor of mathematics in the University, and have made a special study of the science of physics. Finally, in 1892, chiefly on the ground of long service, I was made the president.

“Our progress here has been preëminently healthy—a substantial process of construction from the foundations up. If, from my observation of this development, any wisdom for young men can be gleaned, I would say to them, eliminate impatience and haste from your plans in building the structure of your career. Build slowly, keeping a careful eye upon the quality and placing of every beam and stone. It is by this method only that you will be able to construct an edifice that will be permanently satisfactory to yourself and impressive to the world.

“A conspicuous evil in the present day life of North America is hurry. Young men, in haste to achieve success, force themselves. The able ones rise with a rapidity which, I think is the reverse of beneficial in the long run. A reaction, an aftermath, is apt to come. Their mental and physical elasticity is apt to prematurely disappear, with the result that they will too soon find themselves past the summit of their careers and traveling the declivity on the other side. The great cities on this continent, and particularly those of the United States, have a voracious appetite for the vitality of youth. They develop a man, yes, but they also exhaust him.

“The mistake of this lies principally in the industrial and social pace of the present. Young men, influenced by the city life about them, spend a good deal more money on their living and enjoyment than they did in the days of my own youth, and in their keen desire to keep in the hunt, so to speak, they seek the goal of wealth cross-lots instead of by the more roundabout but much safer highway. The young women who become their wives have great power in the matter of keeping them away from the dangerous short-cuts. A wife should have an intimate knowledge of the varying conditions in her husband’s business, in order that she may properly adjust her expenditures to these conditions. This seems obvious, but the wife’s failure in this respect has been the cause of the undoing of many a man.

“The spirit of materialism and commercialism which is so marked has been, perhaps, a necessary factor in the development of the resources of this continent, but I believe that it is gradually losing its position as the commanding influence in our New World civilization, and that it will become a subordinate element in a broader and higher attitude toward life.”

“This development will come sooner, I think, in the United States than in Canada, for the reason that the former country has had the start of us in the evolution. The rough work of subduing rebellious nature, of clearing land, of breaking virgin soil for agriculture, of building railroads, has been nearly completed across the border, while on our side it is just beginning. We have a great Northwest, still in large degree a wilderness, to cover with farms and homes and the other appurtenances of civilization. We have yet large sections of our East to dot with the towns and the industries which this territory will bountifully support.

“It is only within a very few years that we have begun to take hold of this work with the zeal and determination that brings success. With this twentieth century there has been born in Canada a new spirit of enterprise. Even here in the University its effects have been strongly felt. It was not long ago that a large proportion of our graduates became teachers, or entered some other professional sphere, and in these fields most of them sought their opportunities in the United States. At the present time the majority of our students have turned toward commercial, mechanical or scientific pursuits, and they are finding their openings within our own domain. The standard of pecuniary compensation is advancing, not only in commerce but also in the professions. For example, even as comparatively a short time as a decade ago the largest fees or salaries for legal services never rose above a very few thousand dollars. Now we often hear of Canadian lawyers receiving many thousands in single fees or in yearly salaries from railroad, banking and other corporations. The general tendency is in this direction, and it is a direct result of our industrial expansion. The interests of Canadian employers of brains and labor are becoming larger. They want more men, and better trained men, and are willing to pay them more than in former years.

“Since a university does not completely fulfil its functions unless it keeps in touch with the life of the people and the currents of broad activity, we of the University of Toronto are aiming to keep pace with the new development in Canada. We are equipping young men for many practical pursuits, and are even establishing close relationships with numerous specific industries. Often of late we have had applications from employers for young men capable of assuming responsibilities. We keep track of the demand for youthful brains and university training, and make a point of being always ready to supply it. A notable factor in the practical work of the university is the Agricultural College, which is located at Guelph, Ontario, and controls 550 acres of land, upon which all phases of farming are carried on and taught to nearly six hundred students. We feel that this college is doing work which is very important. Much of the future wealth of Canada will be derived from agriculture, and especially from wheat growing in the Northwest, where hard wheat, the finest in the world, can be produced in sufficient quantities to supply all the markets of the earth. To adequately develop the possibilities of this territory we must have scientific farmers, and this is the kind we are doing our best to train.

“But with all this effort along material lines, we are by no means forgetting at the University of Toronto what we used to call the broad humanities. The play of the spirit, the exercise of the imagination, the stimulus of literature and art, a tolerant and cheerful philosophy are, after all, the things which make life worth living.”

LII

Beginning as Telegraph Operator He Built the Canadian Pacific.

“WHAT is success?” questioned Sir William Van Horne, half-reclining within the hospitable arms of a big chair in his luxurious residence in Shelbrooke Street, Montreal.

“You, Sir William, should surely know,” I remarked. “You are accredited by the world with being very familiar with it.”

“There are numerous subjects upon which the world and I do not agree,” replied, with a smile, the famous railroad builder.

“What is success?” he repeated slowly. “You might say, of course that it is the achievement of a purpose, but in the selection and formation of your purpose you may have made a failure, and then the whole is failure.

“Is contentment success? I am sure it is not. Is wealth? Not by any means. Is power? Not at all.”

Sir William was silent for a moment.

“The truth is,” he said suddenly, “the word success is one of the hardest in the language to define, and I won’t attempt it. I should say however, that a man’s real success in life can be pretty accurately measured by his usefulness as a member of society.

“He may be rich or poor, courted or ignored, but if he does things which at once or eventually make for progress in the world he is most assuredly a success. If, for example, he discovers something new in science, invents a valuable article, paints a great picture, writes a great book, develops a great industry, or——”

“Or builds a great railroad?” I interrupted.

Sir William smiled, and after a pause remarked, “I suppose you intend that to be a personal allusion, but we are not discussing personalities. I will say, however, that some of the men whom down in the States you call captains of industry have my admiration. I care very little whether they give money to charity, whether their work is colored by an active consciousness of its value to anybody outside of their families, their friends and themselves. Most of the men of this stamp are just in their dealings, and it is to their initiative force that the United States owes her material greatness. They have started wheels of industry that have given honest work and many of the comforts of life to millions of self-respecting men. They are rich, yes, and we say that riches do not constitute success. Nevertheless, these men have achieved it in one of its highest forms.”

It was very plain from his manner that in making these remarks Sir William’s thoughts were quite remote from his own career. Yet he himself is one of the most conspicuous and striking representatives on the continent of the class of men he was discussing. His humble start as a small boy in a railway station, contrasted with his present place as a giant in the field of railroading, indicates the height of his own achievement. His career has been a long series of upward steps.

At an age when most boys are playing marbles in short trousers, young Van Horne, forced by the death of his father to earn his own living, obtained a place as general utility boy at a railroad station in the county in Illinois in which in 1843 he was born. Here he saw and seized his first opportunity; that is, he taught himself telegraphy. With this knowledge and a robust personality as his only assets, he journeyed to Chicago and found a position as telegraph operator in the offices of the Illinois Central Railroad. But he did not long hold this place. The telegraphic keys were too small for him. Before he was twenty-two he had gone over to the Chicago & Alton road and was dispatching trains—work of so responsible a character that no railroad company would think for an instant of entrusting it to the ordinary inexperienced youth. But the chief requisite of the train despatcher is care, and care was only one of young Van Horne’s conspicuous qualities. He had a combination of others that overshadowed it and brought him promotion to the place of superintendent of telegraphy.

His work was still too easy for him, so they made him a division superintendent. He was now where the officials of other lines could see him, and the Wabash road took him away from the Chicago & Alton to make him their general manager. He was about thirty years old at this time, but he was already looming so large among the railroad men of the Middle West that when the directors of the Southern Minnesota Railway, which was in the hands of a receiver, bethought themselves to look about for a man who could rehabilitate their road, their eyes fell upon young Van Horne, and they asked him if he thought the line could be made to pay.

He replied that he thought so, and gave his reasons. They then asked him to assume the management of the moribund property. He liked then, as he does now, this kind of a job. There were chances in it far above the mere satisfactory performance of routine duty. There were opportunities here to create, to develop, to quicken into new life; and the young man’s instincts were all in this direction. So he took hold with enthusiasm, and put the company on a paying basis with a rapidity that amazed the stockholders who made him president. He went back to the Chicago & Alton in 1878 as general manager.

In a lifetime of work very few railroad men achieve as much as this, but Van Horne was still in his thirties and was just beginning. The Canadian Government had been trying for several years to push from the Ottawa Valley a road of steel across its vast domain to the Pacific Ocean, and it had found the task too much for it. Surveys had been made, but there had been comparatively little work of actual construction. Finally, in 1880, it was decided to allow the project to become a private enterprise, and in 1881, under the auspices of Sir Donald Smith, now Lord Strathcona, the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company was organized.

After Sir Donald had found the immense amount of money that was required, his greatest care was to find a man to take charge of the construction, much of it through unknown wildernesses, of the longest railway that had ever been projected. The length of the proposed line and the nature of the country through which it was to pass, made this the most stupendous railway undertaking the world had seen. It was necessary to procure a man fitted for a Herculean task. Sir Donald took stock with the railroad men of the New World and decided that the most promising of them all was William C. Van Horne.

The latter went into the work like a football player bucking the line on a university team. An army of men was hired. At an average speed of three miles a day for many months the steel rails were pushed into the vast forests and the trackless prairies of the Northwest. At last the workmen, urged incessantly by the directing mind of General Manager Van Horne, attacked the Rocky Mountains, and under the charges of picks and powder the mountains made way. At the end of the third year the summit of the Rockies had been reached, and before another twelve months had gone by the forbidding passes in the Selkirks were thundering and trembling from the assaults of dynamite.

The last rail of the main line was laid in November, 1885. In the meantime the company had been acquiring branch connections, and before the end of the year was in possession of nearly forty-five hundred miles of track. Before another six months had passed a great system was fully equipped and Canada had her railway from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The contract had called for the completion of the road in ten years. Van Horne and his men had finished it in five. Since then the system has been extended until now it embraces nearly ten thousand miles of track, and steamship lines cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. One may travel eighteen thousand miles on the route and property of the Canadian Pacific. Cities and towns, many thousands of farms and factories, have sprung up along the way. A new commonwealth in the Northwest has been developed. And it has been done under the general direction of Sir William C. Van Horne.

This is why Canadians, when asked to name living men who have done most to develop the Dominion, couple his name with that of Lord Strathcona. The latter, then Sir Donald Smith, had the courage to assume a burden of railway construction that had proved too heavy for the Government. He thus made possible Canada’s only transcontinental railway. Lord Strathcona financed the road, but Sir William Van Horne built it. The latter was its president from 1888 until 1899, when, the creative work being done, the chief difficulties surmounted, he resigned the presidency in favor of Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, and assumed work of less detail as chairman of the board of directors.

Plain William C. Van Horne became Sir William in 1894, when he was knighted by the queen for his high value as a worker in her domains in North America. Being nothing if not democratic, he was inclined, until he became used to it, to wax jocular about his title.

“I’ll wager,” he is reported to have said one day soon after he had received it, “that my old friends among the railroad boys down in Chicago, who used to call me Bill, will make some pointed remarks when they learn that I am Sir William now.”

His bluff geniality is one of the things that Canada likes best about Sir William. She claims him as a citizen, since his greatest work has been done and he has lived for years within her boundaries. She is proud of him and he is proud of her.

“Very few people,” he said to me, “have more than a faint idea of the marvelous resources and possibilities of this country. In the provinces of Quebec and Ontario the innumerable streams rushing down from the mountains offer sufficient water power to run the factories of a nation. A beginning has been made here that will eventually lift this locality into one of the leading industrial and electrical centers of the continent. In the making of paper in particular it will be preëminent. Much of the pulp wood used in paper manufacturing has thus far been obtained from Maine, but the supply there will be exhausted in less than five years, and then the paper makers must come to Canada for their supply of pulp. There are already extensive pulp wood industries in the Province of Quebec, but these are bound to be greatly multiplied.”

“It is in the Northwest, however, where millions of acres of land await only the plow and seed to produce the finest wheat in the world, that the most inviting opportunities for young men are to be found. The Canadian Northwest is much as was the great region of the United States west of the Mississippi River fifty years ago. It is a country at the outset of its development—a country which needs and will adequately reward the vigorous efforts of young manhood.”

“In your field of railroad building I presume there will be great opportunities?” I remarked.

“Undoubtedly,” replied Sir William.

“Is the railroad business a good one for a young man?”

“It is as good as any,” answered Sir William thoughtfully, “if a young man is content to work for a salary all his life. But he should not be content with this. The salary habit is a bad one, very easy to acquire, and very hard to shake off. The man with his stipend every week is apt to settle into a groove. He adjusts his mode of life to his Saturday envelope. It gets to be about the most important thing in his existence. He becomes tied up to it, and is afraid to make a move that will disturb this pleasant union. Always acting under the direction of somebody higher up, he loses his power of initial effort, and never develops to the full extent of his possibilities. He is likely to be a dependent all his life. If after long years of service he loses his place, as often happens, he is nearly helpless.

“I should say to the young man, strike out for yourself as soon as you can. Don’t be afraid to take a chance. Most of the interest of life lies in its uncertainties. You will have your tumbles, of course, but the exercise of standing on your own legs will give you strength to get up again and push on. One of the drawbacks about a salaried place is that a man is apt to lose keen interest in his work, and interest is at the foundation of energy, of concentration of inspiration, even, of all the elements, in brief, that go to make up an adequate performance.

“If you are interested, you will be working with vigor long after most other men have knocked off, tired out, as they imagine. I don’t care to talk about myself, but I will say that whatever my efforts have amounted to they have been impelled by strong interest. The man who feels no enthusiasm for his work will never accomplish anything worth while. Work that is interesting does more than all the doctors to keep men alive and young. I endorse what Russell Sage says about vacations. I don’t believe in them. When a man who has worked hard for many years decides that he has earned a long vacation, and retires from business, it almost invariably means the beginning of the end for him.

“There is nothing strange in this. He has suddenly cut off the interests of a lifetime, and no longer has momentum to carry him along the road of life. On the other hand, look at the old men who have not retired. Russell Sage himself is an excellent illustration; but in his city, New York, where the business pace is supposed to be very swift and wearing, there are many others—patriarchs to whom the allotted span of threescore years and ten is beginning to look like comparative youth, and yet who still are handling great interests. If they had stopped work when they had made fortunes, most of them would have been long since dead.

“Several years ago a London physician of Lord Strathcona informed him that he was in a bad way; that his friends would be mourning his loss in a week unless he permitted himself to relax. In less than a month the death of the doctor made it impossible to withdraw his injunction, so Lord Strathcona has been on the go ever since. He is over eighty now, and is so vigorous that he thinks nothing of taking little business trips from London across the Atlantic and the continent of North America to Vancouver.

“I believe in recreation of course, but I think it should be of a kind that involves activity of the brain. My own mental rest I find in painting pictures. I am very fond of doing landscapes. This takes my mind into a sphere rather remote from railway earnings and expenditures, and is refreshing.”

Sir William showed me a number of his paintings. Some were hung on his walls among those of well-known landscape artists, and in the comparison they suffered not a particle. I commented upon this fact.

“You can’t be much of a judge of art,” he answered with a smile. In this matter, however, many good judges are agreed. It is remarkable that a rough and ready man of affairs, a captain of industry in the true sense, should be able to paint pictures of a quality that many a professional artist might well envy. But Sir William has even wider interests than railroad building and painting. He is largely identified with financial enterprises of great magnitude in the United States, and at present is much absorbed in developing the resources of Cuba, upon which island he believes there are opportunities among the finest in the world for men of either large or small capital.

In addition to these pursuits he is a botanist and geologist of wide and accurate knowledge, and has for years been a close student of the civilization and art of the Orient. Nothing delights him more than a conversation on the art products of China, and he takes great pleasure in showing his friends beautiful specimens in his large collection of Oriental pottery and pictures. Supplement to these interests those of the practical farmer and you will have a partial idea of the range of accomplishments of a man who was making his living at the age of thirteen, and is self-taught.

Sir William has an extensive farm not far from Winnipeg. On a recent occasion, when the agriculturists of the region were holding a meeting to discuss their relations with the Canadian Pacific Railway, and to air some little grievances which they thought they had, Sir William was present, and was called upon to make a speech. He slowly arose, and the tillers of the soil settled back in their chairs to listen to words of great weight and finality from the master spirit of the road.

“I am inclined to think, gentlemen,” said Sir William in one of his opening sentences, “that we farmers are pretty well treated by this road.” From this point the agriculturists were with him to a man, and they left the hall with the feeling that their interests could not be otherwise than well looked after by the railroad company, since at the head of it they had a fellow-farmer.

LIII

An Immigrant Boy Becomes a National Figure in Reform.

THERE died recently in Ohio a man who made a high place for himself in the community. He won a strong hold on the hearts of the working people. He commanded also the respect and support of the majority of law-abiding citizens. I refer to Samuel Jones, late head executive and reform mayor of Toledo. His fame spread fast without the bounds of the municipality, and throughout the nation. He became as widely known as Governor Pingree, of Michigan, as a friend of the people, and for his peculiar yet practical ideas of municipal, social and industrial reform. He also won distinction as an able writer and fluent speaker on the social and economic conditions which affect our national life so strongly to-day.

Besides having been a conspicuous philanthropist, reformer, public officer, orator and writer, it is to be noted that Mayor Jones was, first and last, a successful man of business. He was president of the Acme Oil Company; an inventor and manufacturer of a successful patent—the Acme sucker-rod—an implement for pumping oil wells. He made a fortune as a successful operator in oil, and did it without influence or backing—by dint of industry, honesty and push, starting as a penniless boy, with only such education as he could acquire by himself.

A man of large heart and broad mind, his life presents a stimulating, wholesome example of the self-made, conscientious man of wealth impelled by Christian sympathy, and stung into action by what appeared to him to be the stress of political, industrial and social injustice. He embraced the opportunity which his social position afforded, of carrying out and putting into practice some ideas, of which, quoting Heine, he said: “They have taken possession of me, and are forcing me into the conflict whether I will or not.”

As showing the man, a few incidents are apropos. On going to his factory, one morning, during the hard winter of 1896, Mr. Jones found that some of his office help had affixed a sign to the outside door, “No help wanted.” This he ordered taken away as being contrary to the spirit of the institution. “Men who apply for work should have at least a decent reception,” he said; “maybe we can help them by kind words, even if we have no work for them.”

During the years of financial depression the prosperity of the oil business was affected by the conditions prevalent throughout the country. Mr. Jones issued an order that his work-people should not suffer. “Keep a little flour in the barrel and see that they have coal enough to keep them warm,” was the order.

LOVED BY HIS EMPLOYEES.

He loved to tell how, returning from a trip to Europe, the warmest welcome (and that which shows the popularity of the man) was that given by a crowd of his employees gathered at the Toledo depot to greet him as the train rolled in.

The election of Mr. Jones to the mayoralty of Toledo is an interesting story. He was the candidate nominated in the spring of 1897 to bridge the chasm between the two opposing factions in the Republican party. The saloons, corporations and rings of the city were marshaled against him, but his stout supporters, the wage-earners and the law-abiding people, carried the day after a lively campaign.

The frankness and plainness of Mr. Jones pleased the people as well as his eight-hour day and his ideas of social equality. His messages as mayor to the common council of Toledo were models of businesslike integrity and acumen, showing a vital interest in the welfare of the city, and the value of having a practical and upright business man at the head of civic affairs. Among measures pertinent and practical for the city’s self-government advocated by the mayor were a single-chambered board, city bids, the wage system, a municipal lighting plant, the abolishment of the contract system, the establishing of a purchasing agency to stop the waste of department buying, park and street improvements, etc.

His address before the annual convention of the League of American Municipalities, at Detroit, on “Municipal Ownership” was characterized as the best of the convention, and attracted wide attention. It was repeated at Chicago by request.

Mayor Jones was accorded a warm reception in Boston. He addressed the Twentieth Century Club at a dinner; he was banqueted by the Mayors’ Organization of Massachusetts; he dined with Mayor Quincy, who is something of a reformer himself; and he gave utterance to his views at a public mass-meeting of Boston’s best people. But with characteristic modesty, he looked upon such invitations merely as new opportunities to spread the new gospel, and not in any sense as the means of bringing fame or glory to himself.

The story of Mr. Jones’s successful career carries with it encouragement and example for the young man who starts in life with no capital but manliness, courage, persistency, and a willingness to work.

BORN IN A HUMBLE HOME.

Mr. Jones was born in 1846, in Wales. Of his humble home he says: “It could scarcely be dignified by the name of cottage, for, as I saw it a few years ago, it seemed a little barren hut, though still occupied.” It was in memory of this modest birthplace over the sea, which is known as _Tan y Craig_ (under the rock), that Mr. Jones named his handsome Toledo mansion Tan y Oderwen (under the oak).

Perhaps the following autobiographical statement will serve better than anything I could write to present his life story:

“I came with my parents to America when I was three years old, and I have often heard them tell of the tedious voyage of thirty days in an emigrant sailing ship, and the subsequent voyage over the Erie Canal to central New York, where they settled in Lewis County. My parents were very poor and very pious. The poverty in our family was so stringent that it was necessary for me to go out and work, and I bear upon my body to-day the marks of the injustice and wrong of child labor.

“At the age of eighteen I heard of the opportunities in the oil regions in Pennsylvania, and at once made my way to Titusville. I landed there with fifteen cents in my pocket, and without an acquaintance in the State. For three days I went through one of the most trying experiences of any young man’s life—living without money and seeking work among strangers. I had promised to write to my mother, and I used hotel stationery to fulfil my promise, but was without the necessary three cents then needed to purchase a postage stamp. This was one of the hardest financial problems of my life. I overcame it through stratagem. Seeing a man on the way to the post-office with a bundle of letters I inquired of him: ‘Are you going to the post-office?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Will you have the kindness to mail this for me?’ At the same time I put my hand into my empty pocket in search of the necessary coin, fumbling my pocket-knife and keys a moment. The gentleman kindly said: ‘Never mind, I’ll stamp it,’ and the revenue was provided which took my first letter to my mother.

THE LAND OF OPPORTUNITIES.

“But I was on the right track; I was in a land of opportunities. I soon found work and a business that was to my taste; a business, too, that the good Providence has removed in part, at least, from the domain of the competitive destroyer—the business of producing crude petroleum from the earth.

“Since 1870 I have been more or less of an oil producer. In 1866, I came to the Ohio oil fields and began the business of producing oil at Lima. Since that time I have followed it both in Ohio and Indiana, and to some extent in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In 1893 I invented some improvements in appliances for producing oil, and, finding manufacturers unwilling to make the articles, fearing there would be no profit, I concluded to undertake their manufacture. This brought me in contact with labor conditions in a city for the first time in my life. As a rule, labor in the oil fields had enjoyed large wages compared with similar classes outside. I found men working in Toledo for a fraction of a dollar a day. I began to wonder how it was possible for men to live on such a small sum of money in a way becoming to citizens of a free republic. I studied social conditions, and these led me to feel very keenly the degradation of my fellow-men, and I at once declared that the ‘going wages’ rule should not govern in the Acme Sucker-Rod Company, which is the firm name of our business. I said that the rule that every man is entitled to such a share of the product of his toil as will enable him to live decently, and in such a way that he and his children may be fitted to be citizens of the free republic, should be the rule governing the wages of our establishment.

“To break down the feeling of social inequality, we began to ‘get together,’—that is, we had little excursions down the bay. We invited our workmen and their families, and also some other people who live in big houses and do not work with their hands. We sought to mix them, to let them understand that we were all people—just people, you know.

GOOD WILL AND FELLOWSHIP IN BUSINESS.

“As our business increased, we took in new men. We made no special effort to select. We asked no questions as to their habits, their morals, their religion or their irreligion. We were ignoring the sacred rule of business, getting along in a sort of free and easy way, occasionally giving the boys a word of caution, printed on the envelopes; then, perhaps, a little letter expressing good will and fellowship. Then we came to feel the need of a rule to govern the place. We thought, to that extent, we ought to be like other people. So we had the following printed on a piece of tin and nailed to the wall. It’s there to-day:

“‘The Rule Governing This Factory: Therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’

“In 1895, at Christmas time, we made a little cash dividend, accompanying it with such a letter as we believed would be helpful. In 1896, we repeated the dividend and the letter. In 1897 and 1898 we did the same.”

In response to the query as to how he would regulate property interests, Mayor Jones said:

“If you will read the Fourth of Acts and see how property was regarded and treated by the early Christians, you will read what I believe to be the one scientific way in which property can be handled for the good of all. The manifest destiny of the world is to realize brotherhood. We are brothers, not competitors.”

“What would you advise the rising generation to do to bring about such a realization?”

“That is an important question,” replied the mayor. “Well, I am free to answer that I think by far the best thing that the Acme Sucker-Rod Company has done has been to open the adjoining corner lot as a Golden Rule park and playground. Here is a spot of God’s green earth in the heart of the industrial part of our city that is as free to the people as when the red Indian trod there. And I am sure that the healthful play of the children and the delightful studies of the older ones as we discuss the questions of brotherhood, golden rule, and right relations generally, in our Sunday afternoon meetings, will do more to bring about the era of peace and good will than all else that has been done there. And now we have added Golden Rule Hall, where we may continue these studies, for we must first understand our disease before we can apply the remedy.

TRYING TO LEARN HOW TO HELP EACH OTHER.

“How delightful are the hours which we pass together in the study of the question of right social relations! How much like men it makes us feel to think that we are spending a part of our time in trying to learn how we can help each other; that is, help all the people, instead of devoting it all to the piggish business of helping ourselves!

“As an outgrowth of that spirit, during the past year, we have: our coöperative insurance; the Co-operative Oil Company; the Tuesday Night Social Study Club; and the Equality Club.

“Our experience has been progressive, and, I believe, profitable, in a moral as well as a material way. I have learned much of my relation to my fellow-men. I have learned that we are all dependent on each other.

“In introducing the shorter workday and trying to establish living wages we have tried to acknowledge, in some measure, the relation of brotherhood that exists between us and all other men; for we must remember that this bond is only limited by the confines of the globe itself.”

“When I first took office I ignored the professional politicians. Some of my friends expostulated with me. They assured me that I was ruining my future. I answered that I did not want a future based upon a disregard of the principle that an office-holder should faithfully serve the people. I told them that I would be glad to sacrifice my chances for a second term as mayor, if I could be equal to the responsibilities that were pressing upon me. They laughed, and called me impracticable—a dreamer. And yet, my way, so far, has proved successful, even from their standard of success, which, in some particulars, is quite remote from my own. My political experience has been of great encouragement to me. It has made me feel that, despite the seeming success of mere self-seekers, honesty of purpose in the discharge of public duties will, in the end, prevail.

YOUNG MEN IN POLITICS.

“And because I believe this is true, I hope to see earnest, honest young men go into politics. If they have strong convictions of what is right, and force of character enough to hold to these convictions against the many wrongful pressures and influences of political life, they will achieve success of the best kind.

“To-day, more than ever before in its history, the country needs men of this kind. Conditions have come into existence which must be changed. From an experience of years in practical business, I say that the young man now starts in commercial life heavily handicapped. In almost every line of business, he must fight great accumulations of capital, that usually either crush him or make a hireling of him. It has been said that the very name of America is a synonym of opportunity. It was so once, but my experience has taught me that this is entirely true no longer.

EVILS OF CONCENTRATION.