Chapter C: E. HORNING D.P.A., G.T.R., Toronto (1)

J. O. GOODSELL A.G.P.A., U.P.R., Kansas City, Mo.

R. J. KEARNS New York Life Company, Toronto.

W. D. WILSON Wilson, Lytle, Badgerow Co., Tor.
]

BY-WATER MAGAZINE

Business Getter’s Competition Prize Winning Essay

Eighty per cent. of new business secured--after eliminating the advantageous influence of good advertising well placed--results not from unusual happenings or quasi-romantic incidents. It originates in pressing industrial expansion and broad education, it flows through modern channels, and along those thorny, old-fashioned highways of endeavor such as persistent, methodical solicitation of passenger and freight traffic, a conscientious interest in its handling and disposition after acceptance, and above all depends upon the good will and very essential aid of each one of that many sided army employed by the transportation corporations whose arteries provide the means for commercial life’s activities.

Assuming that you desire to introduce or further exploit a worthy service and route, publicity should be the first vital consideration. In this propaganda who can better assist you to reach the world and his wife than the rank and file, than those men and youths of high and low degree whom you meet when you occasionally call and who, during your absence, are always in immediate contact with buyers and the stream of enquiring public, alert and receptive, like a big league star playing close to the third sack.

It has been, let us suppose, a regrettable necessity that prevented officials from organizing the present desultory practice into a system of at least three meetings a year when separated railway employees and their superiors could meet and discuss subjects pertaining to the relations existing between the company and its patrons. At such anticipated and informal conventions every one present is urged to express opinions. Traffic matters are viewed from different angles, the solitary agent who thinks himself and agency discriminated against, learns the larger reason for local inconvenience, outside representatives obtain a “close up” inspection of the chiefs in action and the plan, as a fixture, would become a sound, progressive measure as well as a distinctive advantage to the _esprit de corps_ of any transportation company’s staff.

Man is a gregarious, sociable “critter”, fond of exchanging “idears”, an impressionable, flesh and blood individual quite like yourself, who easily responds to straightforward, properly timed overtures of the railway and steamship traveling fraternity, ever willing to concede you an “even break”, or better, if merited. Collectively they are the Central News Bureau in your line, diplomatically safeguarding your reasonable expectations. More prospects come to light, more new business is secured and resolved into renewals through the agency of ticket sellers and traffic men by the gradual ingratiating of personality than via any of the other mediums. An indiscreet, pugnacious official who, for instance, soberly declares that only his company’s wall map embodies all the virtues invites ridicule and gets it.

Collaborate and hobnob with the nabob in the inner railway or warehouse sanctum sanctorum, and the next man down, if you will: they deserve that deference and “were poor once themselves”, but do not always flock with the headquarters staff and entirely overlook the other boys, nor the understudy to the traffic manager of those firms controlling ten cars per week or ten cases a month. They see and hear unthought of items of interest and possess long memories. Cultivate your recollection of faces and names, for to-morrow or next season a clerk may gravitate to “Depot or City Ticket Agent” and opportunity, with passengers leaving to his guidance and judgment “What route should we take” and it is to his address that advertising points the finger.

A few companies endeavor to arrange the time and transportation which enables certain city ticket agents to journey over the main line of their property for educative reasons, but the experienced assistants are too infrequently included, are seldom sent on an excursion into outside territory, and never attend a ticket agents’ association meeting, and yet, the nature of their duties implies ability to promptly and accurately answer innumerable questions regarding junction connections, baggage transfer, location of foreign line depots, dining and sleeping facilities as well as geographical peculiarities. Books there are that print some of this information, but often the enquirer departs disappointed without exact details, but to the men who have been over the ground with eyes open, it is decidedly satisfying to be able to intelligently submit the facts and note how your statements carry conviction and impress the recipient. Of all people needing the experience of travel, the ticketing agent who directs others on their journeys should be first to possess that advantage.

Dispensing to these gentlemen few promises and religiously observing those is a strong undercurrent in shaping your course. Unfailing attention to reservation requests, prompt news of the whereabouts of specific shipments, and early notification of upward tariff revisals, &c., &c., are assets that help forge a friendship out of which springs new business, which a “fourflusher” or thoughtless one is prone to overlook after his final handshake. “O consistency, thou art a jewel.”

In circles where the weed is so popular, the “eternal cigar” is good-naturedly accepted only as a lubricant to the wheels of conversation, but in the name of all that is gloomy and peculiar do not insult the intelligence of some captain of industry, or “regular fellow”, by flashing on him the moment you enter The Presence, what seems like a transparent bribe in the form of a cheroot a few degrees better than the “Bartender’s Revenge”. Many of them indulge a weakness for more delicate fragrance at Half a Dollar for three or two. Because such a contretemps was studiously avoided by the writer several years ago, a prominent Hamilton, Canada, merchant--then patronizing a competitor--gave “our route” a dozen cars of eastbound California fruit and explained why.

Few transportation people are so sinuous and adept as to be “all things to all men” without “trimming” and loss of self-respect, where one representative is quite _au fait_ with the powers that be, another will make indifferent headway, but you may note in your log book that these observations outline some practices which will retain old acquaintances and secure a fair measure of new business.

An exceptional record in this field of endeavor

1. W. B. BAMFORD, District Freight Agent, Canadian Pacific
Railway, Toronto, Ont.

2. H. E. BEASLEY, General Superintendent, Esquimalt & Nainamo
Railway, Victoria, B.C.

3. JOHN BELL, (the late), General Counsel, Grand Trunk Railway,
Montreal.

4. W. H. BIGGAR, Vice-President and General Counsel, G.T.R.,
Montreal.

5. W. E. BURKE, Assistant Manager, Canada Steamship Lines,
Toronto, Ont.

6. A. B. CHOWN, Traveling Passenger Agent, Grand Trunk Railway,
Pittsburg.

7. J. M. COPELAND, T.F. & P.A., Chicago & Northwestern Railway,
Toronto. R. J. COTTRELL, Locomotive Foreman, Grand Trunk
Railway, St. Thomas, Ont.

8. W. P. DEMPSEY, T.F. & P.A., Chicago & Northwestern Railway,
Detroit. E. DONALD, Land and Tax Commissioner, Grand Trunk
Railway, Montreal.

9. W. J. DUCKWORTH, Superintendent of Construction, G.N.W.
Telegraph Co., Toronto. J. H. ELLIS, Secretary, Louisville &
Nashville Railway, Louisville, Ky.

10. W. E. FOSTER, K.C., Solicitor for Ontario, Grand Trunk
Railway, Montreal.

11. JOHN A. GRIER, (the late), G.F.A., M.C.R., also General
Manager, Hoosac Tunnel Line, Chicago.

12. R. HAY, C.P. & T.A., Canadian Northern Railway, Vancouver,
B.C.

12. J. HAY, Locomotive Foreman, Grand Trunk Railway, Sarnia, Ont.

12. D. J. HAY, Former Air Brake Inspector, Grand Trunk Railway,
Stratford, Ont.

13. E. W. HOLTON, General Passenger Agent, Northern Navigation
Co., Sarnia, Ont. R. IVERS, (the late), Locomotive Foreman,
Grand Trunk Railway, London, Ont. H. R. KELLY, Superintendent,
Canadian Northern Railway, Capreol, Ont.

14. W. H. KENNEDY, Master Mechanic, Grand Trunk Railway,
Toronto--Fighting for us in France. T. W. R. MCRAE, Claims
Agent, Grand Trunk Railway, Montreal, Que.

15. R. B. MOODIE, (the late), General Agent, Intercolonial
Railway, Toronto.

16. F. H. PHIPPEN, K.C., General Counsel, Canadian Northern
Railway, Toronto.

17. GEO. H. POPE, (the late), Right of Way Commissioner, Grand
Trunk Pacific Railway.

18. W. W. POPE, Secretary Hydro Commission--former Assistant
to General Counsel, G.T.R. J. P. PRATT, Assistant to General
Counsel, Grand Trunk Railway, Montreal.

19. W. D. ROBB, Vice-President, Grand Trunk Railway System,
Montreal, Que.

20. W. ROBERTSON, Former M.S., G.T.R., Maker of Robertson Cinder
Conveyor, Chicago. T. WATERSON, Chief Clerk to General Counsel,
Grand Trunk Railway.

The tribute on the following page is inspired by the charm and beauty of the bay where Belleville’s absent sons sailed, skated, fished and swam.]

LINES TO QUEEN QUINTE

Green are the hills when far away,
And Youth in leash craves Manhood’s sway:
Placid the waters that wash the sands,
The sky is blue o’er distant lands.
Yet phantom castles--springtime dreams,
Dissolve like foam on woodland streams,
As Fancy--chastened by breath of Time,
Reasons in prose and not in rhyme:
Yearning ceases--behold at home
The glories pictured by they who roam.
Rimmed with vesture of verdant green,
Basks Quinte Bay--perennial queen:
Matron--a seer--she spans full years
Of promise, hardship, wreckage, tears.
From pre-historic days of yore
Her scroll is writ with mystic lore.
O’er her breast stole birchen craft
Burdened with Redskin, bows and shaft;
Swiftly stalking widgeon and deer
Or Paleface tiller settled near.
Champlain and Franklin sensed her spell,
As did good priest with book and bell.
Soldier, trapper and creaking stage
Have seen Dame Quinte lashed in rage,
But seldom doth she portend ill,
Her mood is tranquil, coaxing, still.
Who hath not felt her soft caress,
Limpid, seductive as maiden’s tress,
Who hath skimmed her foaming crest
With spreading sheet at her behest,
And doth not sing throughout his days
Of this real gem amongst the bays.
Ensconced in a setting of green and gold,
She is ever young to young and old:
Could her waters speak as they flow along,
“Forget me not” would be their song.

THE CANADIAN NORTHERN RAILWAY SYSTEM

President, Canadian Northern Railway System.]

With her feeders and tributaries tapping the distant, beautiful valleys of historic Arcadia and a trunk line that ensures a through fast freight service from ancient Quebec--an ideal gateway for men who go down to the sea in ships--the second steel highway in Canada’s transcontinental trio stretches hundreds of miles far and away through rolling uplands, untouched forests and waving wheat fields to Burrard Inlet and flourishing Vancouver, a busy maritime mart and door to the placid Pacific.

Built or purchased and gradually assembled by Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann, the capitalization of the Canadian Northern Railway System, which will be taken over by the Government of the Dominion of Canada, has been reckoned at approximately $43,000 per mile for 10,000 miles of railway actually under operation, and during the arbitration proceedings at Osgoode Hall, Toronto, Mr. Pierce Butler, St. Paul, Minn., counsel speaking in behalf of his clients, stated that the railway was now on a basis of $50,000,000 gross earnings a year.

Previous to the declaration of war the “C.N.R.” was financed mainly by British capitalists whose intentions, apart from expected profit, were to directly increase the yield and transportation facilities for wheat against the possibilities of war, having in mind how far below consumption was their own production of the fundamental food.

In 1896 the Manitoba Legislature passed a charter, with land grants, providing for the construction of the Lake Manitoba Railway & Canal Company, which was not taken advantage of until 1899, when Messrs. Mackenzie and Mann purchased and commenced construction from Gladstone, Manitoba, to Winnipegosis, Manitoba, 123 miles, and operation was inaugurated January 3rd, 1897.

Construction was started the same year on the Manitoba & Southeastern Railway from Winnipeg to the Great Lakes, and in November, 1898, 45 miles of it were operated, St. Boniface to Marchand.

The Northern Pacific Railway lines in Manitoba were acquired in 1901, and in the same year the thin edge of the wedge was inserted in Ontario when Parry Sound rejoiced over its first railway connection with the outside--a 3.3 mile spur to a Canada Atlantic Railway junction.

Vice-President, Canadian Northern Railway System.]

In 1911 the track-end had reached the foot-hills of the Rockies and engineers declare the C.N.R.’s low elevation at the Yellow Head Pass, and where its line later decends to the sea by the valleys of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers through the Cascade Range, locates the track only a few feet above tidewater of the Pacific Ocean.

At one point on the “C.N.R.” mountain division the track is only 4½ miles from the base of Mount Robson--altitude 13,068 feet--the highest peak in the Rocky Mountains.

With the completion of the “C.N.R.” central Montreal terminal, near Dominion Square, which is approached by a 3.3 mile double tracked tunnel beneath Mount Royal, the Directorate will have an exceptional advantage in being able to move solid trains from west to east without backing down from dead-end tracks or breaking up their train formation.

The “C.N.R.” serves urban centres having more than 1,000 population containing 90% of the population of the towns and cities of Alberta and 97% of Saskatchewan, the centre of the wheat belt.

If the system should be extended to connect Toronto with Hamilton it would then have access to cities and towns aggregating 60% of the town dwellers of the entire provinces, which also produce 70% of their total manufactured products.

In 1916 the “C.N.R.” carried 132,000,000 bushels of grain: if reduced to flour and the manufactured flour which it transported be added thereto, the foodstuffs from territory along the “C.N.R.” would be sufficient to supply the British Isles’ 45,000,000 population with four pounds of bread each per week for six months. The “C.N.R.” should therefore, be regarded, especially since the advent of war, as an essential to the life of the Empire.

Statistics go to show that in the Provinces of Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, where the principal Canadian pulp and paper mills are situated, those of the greatest capacity--or 53% of the total capacity--are situated exclusively on “C.N.R.” lines.

Third Vice-President, Canadian Northern Railway System.]

For the year that ended with July, 1916, the exports of paper amounted to $21,680,000 of which 88% went to the United States, and the total exports of pulpwood, pulp and paper for that year were valued at $40,865,266. United States consumers gladly took 87% of this immense output, but the United Kingdom received only 6%.

During 1917, 85,000,000 feet of British Columbia lumber, in 3,850 cars, were handled by “C.N.R.” to the Prairie Provinces and Eastern Canada. Balsam and Douglas fir, red cedar, spruce, hemlock, &c., predominated. Silver spruce for aeroplanes came also, and as a result of the efforts of the Imperial Munitions Board the output of the latter has been recently doubled, the monthly production at present being approximately 1,200,000 feet.

Mr. W. H. Moore, Secretary of “C.N.R.”, in “Railway Nationalization and the Average Citizen”, makes some clear and terse comparisons of deep interest to the public spirited tax-payer anent the government’s aid given in cash, land and guaranteed bonds to “C.N.R.”, and subsidiary properties, and also to other Canadian railways, especially the Canadian Pacific Railway. He sets down that the “C.N.R.” received from federal, provincial and municipal coffers.--

Land Acres $ 6,555,708
Cash subsidies 38,874,148
Guarantees by governments 211,641,140
Federal loans 25,858,166

In rebuttal, the Government Bureau of Railway Statistics tabulates--

To “C.P.R.”, land Acres $ 28,023,185
Cash aid to “C.P.R.” 108,920,375
Loans from Dominion Government (paid back) 40,000,000

The Dominion Government’s Board of Arbitrators--Sir William Meredith, Chief Justice Harris and Wallace Nesbitt, K.C.,--which submitted a report as to the value of 600,000 shares of Canadian Northern Railway common stock, consumed 50 days from March to the middle of May in hearing the testimony of legal counsel and valuation experts, the proceedings totalling over 1,500,000 words of evidence and costing about $100,000.

General Counsel, Canadian Northern Railway System.]

The Board’s award of $10,800,000 for the railway stock valuated, exceeded by $800,000 the limit for same made by Act of Parliament, which was $10,000,000.

Each group of participating principals paid its own costs, but the Government bore the cost of taking the evidence.

The Dominion Government is perfecting a plan whereby the “C.N.R.” will be operated as a corporation under a board of directors to be appointed by the Government. Time will tell if this method reaches fruition.

The total liabilities being taken over by the Government in connection with the “C.N.R.” are $438,264,377.67 and the assets sum up to $528,437,885.74.

Speaking for himself and also voicing the views of Sir Donald Mann and Third Vice-President D. B. Hanna, Sir William Mackenzie contended that the “C.N.R.” was destined to be an essential factor in the expansion of this country and that in the opinion of the transportation experts who had examined the situation, their properties would be particularly useful in the reconstruction days on which this land must soon enter. He said his associates had devoted the best of their years in developing the system to the present state of efficiency and confidently relied on the future to justify their work and estimates of values.

❦ ❦ ❦

As anticipated, since this resume was set in type, the
Government of the Dominion of Canada has assumed control of the
Canadian Northern Railway and operation of the system will at
once be undertaken by a board of eight representative gentlemen
with a practical and experienced railroader, Mr. D. B. Hanna,
as President, who will have associated with him

Graham A. Bell, Major, Deputy Minister of Railways
A. J. Mitchell, Ottawa
E. R. Wood, Toronto, Capitalist
Robert Hobson, Hamilton, Ironmaster
Frank P. Jones, Montreal, Manager Canada Cement Company
A. T. Riley, Winnipeg, Financier
C. M. Hamilton, Weyburn, Sask., Agriculturist

A TENDERFOOT IN TEMISKAMING

And the silent places beyond awaiting the iron horse

Marketing the jubilant flag pole and Christmas tree is a comparatively unhackneyed commercial twist not overdone and if discontented dwellers in old Ontario, seigneurial Quebec or the world at large, like that prospect or court a change from brick and asphalt to the silent places, opportunity beckons to them from amidst the serried ranks of raw material swarming over the hilly, rock-ribbed areas of Temagami, the dales of Temiskaming and Porcupine’s budding principality of golden promise.

As the newcomer’s eyes view the sea of tapering masts--shorn of drapery in winter--and the springtimes’ green undergrowth crowning summits and slopes, which in that corner of the Canadian hinterland undoubtedly conceal unconjectured lodes of mineral wealth, his brain tabulates new and fascinating impressions respecting this vast heritage and pregnant land of the future.

With the theodolite adjusted for action beside the site of a gateway to the proposed Georgian Bay Ship Canal, and shaping a course North-starward from historic environs once traversed by intrepid Frenchmen, the Ontario Government’s Railway Commission began in 1902 the construction of a colonization line from the City of North Bay, (lying 226 miles above Toronto), to the region known as the “Clay Belt” of Northern Ontario. With the discovery of silver on the “LaRose” property in 1903, the output of which during the subsequent thirteen years amounted to $135,809,222 in silver value from the camp, together with $4,000,000 from arsenic, cobalt and nickel, the building of the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway was promptly extended until it reached 253 miles into the interior, making easily accessible a restful, inspiring panorama of diversified lake and landscape. Here it is that Uncle Sam’s sweltering Southerners and their Northern cousins migrate with the birds in ever increasing numbers to fish the virgin streams, to sense exhaling aromatic fragrance and be soothed by the solitude and majesty of the wilderness which appeals more and more to each contemplative one who would elude the madding crowd as he jogs adown the irregular pathway of life.

If the waters of silent Lake Nipissing could speak as they flow along, what whisperings from wigwam, of tribal feuds and exploring missionary priests would they not bequeath to posterity. But now, into this region of log cabin, birch bark and bittern those great civilizers, the twin ribbons of steel, have intruded; sleeping cars mosaic tiled and ornate, traveling via the Grand Trunk Railway from Toronto, Canadian Pacific Railway from Montreal and “U.S.A.” at Buffalo, are delivered daily to the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway and circumventing space, lay bare to their prying, adventurous occupants, many of the secrets of nature in the north.

A “Great Western” Graduate. Dean of G.T.R. Dining Car Conductors. Favorably known to patrons of the “Cobalt Special.”]

As you bowl along past thicket, lake and narrow ledge to the regular accompaniment of that peculiar circus wagon “cluck, cluck”, emitted in winter by the twelve wheelers, you unconsciously wonder if it were mink, otter, lynx or fox whose softly falling pads made the trail which bisects the otherwise unruffled white mantle covering the frozen surface yonder. Meanwhile, the telltale tracks of the early morning prowlers vanish abruptly where the waters frozen boundary gives way to battalions of balsam, spruce and jack pine silently guarding the ascent to rising ground. The view begets reflection: when casually discussing the autumn hunt with a deer slayer who annually roams that region, nimrod complacently informed me that he had left the train at mileage “22” from North Bay, and before the locomotive whistled on a nearby hill his first buck was bagged. At this juncture an Indian guide from out the forest setting surrounding Lady Evelyn Lake came aboard at Temagami’s commodious, artistically conceived depot of split hardheads, and grinning broadly, substantiated the boaster’s declaration with such terseness and force that a group of globe trotting mine prospectors and sportsmen grew interested. Rifles, fish, fur and game laws started every mother’s son of them talking, and the jolly wiseacres continued their conversazione crossing Net Lake, past Rib Lake and its woodie approaches, and on to where Jack Frost had transferred Bay Lake, Wind Lake, Moose Lake and Red Pine Lakes, into cubes of crystal transparence. They did not desist until permitted a glimpse through car window of the Montreal River’s splashing, rapids tossed waters at Latchford and the developing timber possibilities at this ford, which are often duplicated along the 360 miles of this stream’s course.

These gentlemen were a cosmopolitan assemblage recruited from several and diverse regions, but all were heading towards Lake Temagami, Cobalt, Lorrain and Porcupine City’s newer, veiled enticements. Gnarled and seasoned, a veteran campaigner on “many a foreign strand” sat silently observant beside a sturdy novice, self-possessed and hopeful, encased in flannel shirt, regulation shooting boots laced high and a cow boy hat, who had yet to know hunger and the thrill of a “strike”. That composite character from the cities, merchant-miner-speculator evolved from the silver excitement, was there with his pigeon blood cravat pin and nonchalant demeanor, exchanging deductions with a facing stranger. Some one drew cork and with a mild libation all round the smoker, tongue cords loosed and a Kentuckian garbed in Mackinaw cloth knee breeches, heavy black stockings and Jaeger cap, narrated pleasantly tales of the diggings in Australia, California, Cripple Creek. A man who had been in Johannesburg talked knowingly of John Hays Hammond and the conductor tarried a moment on his rounds. Now and then, from out the babel you pieced together, “It sold this morning for--”, “Commercial arsenic”, “Rock drills”, “For stealing whiskey I smashed him on the--”, “Three and one half a share, five dollars par”, and much more in the vernacular. They were encumbered with the latest, likewise the most ancient caper in portmanteaux: they carried fire arms, hatchets, and snow shoes, coats of fewer colors than Joseph’s, but of patterns innumerable, and pack sacks stuffed like the bundles Tony shoulders when hurrying to the base of grim Vesuvius. Withal, they were a merry and optimistic company off to re-discover Champlain’s own territory, to learn that cobalt is a pinkish chemical by-product found beside silver, that single carload shipments of silver concentrates mined here have netted $142,231.00, that the camp’s dividends from silver and gold for 14 years realized $81,320,625, that rolling stock of railways all over America help to brighten “T. & N.O.” rails, that the town of Cobalt is outlandishly picturesque and unique with cartwheel, Bostonlike thoroughfares where Madame promenades in the velvet so recently au fait on Pall Mall and Broadway, while an Indian girl in moccasins stares across the divide through the window of the Golden Moon in the hope of discerning her lethargic beau. Vein sampling engineers, grubstakers, rock-worms, mine captains, prospectors and agents in coats of “astrachan goose”, fur lined or skin covered shooting jackets and everything else but tarpaulins, strut about and add to their kit, each man jack of them probably thinking he has “a nose for ore” and inside information. The oriental ear pendant also abounds, gracing the lobes of sundry vivacious French lassies at the cinematograph: dog trains await, Jacques the habitant, in capot, sash and pipe in mouth “Bon jeurs” along the even tenor of his way, while Poles, Finns and Cockney ’arry do not deliberately jostle you off the lumpy little board walk to the nearby excavation. Stalwart, brass buttoned Ontario and Dominion police are everywhere. Cobalt’s roots spread far below the surface. Underground detonations indicate that compressed air drills day and night slowly blast a mammoth sewerway for this hustling town. Not every one knows that beneath the “T. & N.O.R.” highway and handsome modern station building the Right of Way Mining Company tunnels for ore. A few hundred yards beyond and under the bottom of frozen Cobalt Lake, over which the dutiful citizen crosses on Sabbath and holyday to Father Forget’s cleanly, white painted church, the Cobalt Lake Mining Company is extending drives, crosscuts and leads seeking material that produces mineral which pleases magnates and sets the stock market operators by the ears. $1,085,000 was paid to the Government for this right. Thus does the south lag behind the north.

From Lorrain’s remote locality comes to Cobalt mines the compressed air and electric current generated with unique machinery from the waters impetuousity at Ragged Chutes on the Montreal River, at Hound Chute also, and at the Matabitchouan River, and not afar off the cottage in which it is said Doctor Drummond’s sympathetic spirit forsook its mortal tabernacle, keeps solitary vigil on a slope overlooking Kerr Lake. His inimitable habitant patois verse survives however, and is kept green in memory when interpreted by the nimble tongues of M. Giles or an Olive Pouze. Occasionally grazing the brink of a declivity when touring the camp, one meets wheeling or gliding past on sled behind good horses, miner’s wife from Montana or a courier in shoe packs and cold weather rig astride a sturdy, sure-footed pony. Jogging along after him the next is a native on a mustang. Similarly mounted a rangy, vigorous individual clad in seamy corduroys, jacket, ear flaps and the inevitable “larrigans” lopes by. This personage proves to be unintentionally traveling incog, as he is a big mine manager, an English expert doting on tetrahedrite crystals, heading to town for a constitutional and the morning mail.

As recently as midnight of August 19th, 1912, an undignified and profane pilgrimage to the shrine of the goddess of fortune occurred in Temiskaming. At the stroke of twelve a ziz-zagging procession of flickering lights born by all manner of men, stretching from Cobalt three miles to the famous, now naked Gillies Timber Limit, broke into motion at the double quick. Ahead of them were twelve square miles--4,000 acres--or twenty acres of undiagnosed area of rock each for the lucky two hundred eager, excited prospectors and adventurers who might stake, find ore and register for $10 at Haileybury first, and thus perchance, stumble on a king’s ransom. Ordinarily, the journey on steam coach costs Ten Cents. This night one bold spirit chartered a special train for $50.00 hoping to outstrip the throng afoot and horseback, in autos and on bicycles, armed as they were with a Five Dollar mining license and panting for place. For an hour or two the nervous strain was intense and the schemes and ruses resorted to for advantage were numerous and crafty. Sweating relay horses clattered at top speed all night between the new diggings and the district seat, positions held in person or proxy in the line-up waiting for dawn reminded one of the nocturnal vigil and struggle for tickets to behold the late Sir Henry Irving, while rumor and conjecture were rife. One energetic but luckless individual, with boundary stakes in earth, had them uprooted and tossed aside by a speculator’s hireling the moment he headed to the registry office; another collapsed from exhaustion and laid prone in the bush as the strong trod over his body and aspirations and still a third poor devil lost a pronounced advantage by falling, horse and rider, into a quagmire at the roadside, and all because there lies side by side beneath the earth’s surface silver sidewalks and blighted hopes.

Chairman, Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway Commission]

Do not conclude that the term “rough diamonds” would fitly describe the mining body of to-day nor opine that they always talk gold at $20 the ounce, assay furnaces, vanners and recording tachometers. Their personnel includes a mighty spry collection of thoroughbreds of advanced education from everywhere. They are men fond of horse-flesh and saddle; men who aim straight at billiard ball or bob cat and a percentage can coax sweet strains from piano or at odd moments resort to the not violent and refining pleasure of gardening. I have seldom seen a gaudier conglomeration of old-fashioned bloom than the flowers before the bungalow of the Temiskaming Mine. In their offices and apartments several enjoy club comforts and trophies and articles of _virtu_ adorn the walls of highly polished logs. They can “diagnose the field” for a close corporation and by theory and experience prophecy what may be found under the crust away east to Des Joachins (des swish aw) Falls, Lake St. John and Chibougamou. The gentleman who cheerfully volunteered, flashlight in hand, to pilot the writer to where drillers pierced rock at mine bottom, wore riding breeches, jacket and English spring leggings of the most approved design and a stunning waistcoat encircled his athletic proportions. He proved to be a raconteur with reminisences of “Ole Lunnon” and the Riviera, but swore fealty to Ireland’s joyous effervescence.

The legacy of this untrodden expanse is unlimited productiveness of soil, waterways and forest. The solitary explorer with pack horse and canoe spyed out a winding trail which the railways’ impedimenta of progress has speedily straightened and made easy for the quasi pioneer. The rolling ground and gentle slopes in the vicinity of Haileybury are pleasant to see. Here the clay belt and husbandman replaces rock and miner and the view from this town and farmer’s mecca--which boasts the unique feature of a floating market place--out and over Lake Temiskaming and across to where the mists conceal a quaint French settlement, Villa Marie, is indeed charming. On learning that the mission bells pealed and a convent dwelt within the borders of Quebec just over that moonlit expanse of inland sea, I confess my conception of interprovincial geography seemed out of alignment. Englehart, a divisional point, bears the name of the Railway Commission’s astute, public spirited Chairman, Jacob L. Englehart, formerly of Cleveland, Ohio, who made his Canadian debut in the Petrolia oil belt, and some forty years ago supported Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt when he was married in the Tecumseh Hotel, London, Canada, to the beautiful Mrs. Crawford of Baton Rouge, La. Jacob Englehart inaugurated the system of greenhouses which flourish in those leagues of loam and clay but the plants which predominate in that “neck of the woods”, however, are those that grow into thousands of cords of coveted pulpwood, cut in certain districts by private owners and on reserves with Government sanction. As this commodity underlies in a vital way the immense paper and publishing interests of America and Europe the supply, method of treatment, market and duty tax has become a burning topic in factory and forum both sides of the international boundary.

Those wind tossed forest monarchs and old pines on the hill tops that once beheld naught save the Redskin stalking an hundred animate creatures of the wild, will if spared, witness a mighty trek northward. The caravan of the white man of every clime and craft shall push past haunts of black bear, moose and trapper, portaging enroute near Cochrane beside Frederick House River. At this spot an incident at Barbers Bay in the semi-savage days of the old trading posts of the north country, has become a fearsome tradition among the indians of the Abitibi. Many years ago when the Hudson Bay Company were extending trading posts southward from Moose Factory, Frederick Barber with Indians and voyageurs established a store beside a bay perpetuating his name, at Frederick House Lake. One Christmas eve Macdougall, a halfbreed, and two companions reached the post to trade their autumn catch. Together with gifts Barber unfortunately dispensed rum. When refused more liquor the trappers murdered all hands and seized the fort. Fearing discovery and punishment of their crime, the drunken half-breeds killed every Indian who came to the post with furs. Growing anxious, several squaws who had not accompanied their braves on the midwinter journey, snow-shoed to Barbers Bay and were imprisoned by Macdougall. One woman escaped and organized an avenging party which did not arrive in time to prevent the massacre of the remaining squaws nor the flight of the halfbreed scoundrels. Then began a long chase down the Black and Abitibi Rivers. Macdougall who was tobagganing loot from the fort, was nearly overtaken in camp. He saw the trackers coming and started across Lake Abitibi, disappearing during a brief snow storm and was never seen after. The Indians gave evil spirits the credit when he vanished and they suppose the half-breed’s ghost still lingers over the lakes. It is across these trackless fastnesses, under whispering Northern Lights, that the newest national highway, the National Trans-continental & Grand Trunk Pacific Systems, dreamt of by the patriot the Right Honorable Sir Wilfrid Laurier, gradually assumed reality and now hasten communication westward with tidings from the east.

Yea, the crusade will not cease until little old Ontario is linked with the Aurora Borealis and the venturesome commoner at Frisco, New Orleans and Toronto may side step the soaring bovine market, and after an all-rail journey, harpoon his own walrus meat in James and Hudson’s Bays.

❦ ❦ ❦

MONSIEUR WILLIAM P. DUPEROW

General Passenger Agent, Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Government Railways

Text of an address presented to him at Toronto on the occasion of his transfer May, 1910, to “Grand Trunk Pacific” service at Vancouver, B.C.

General Passenger Agent, Grand Trunk Pacific and Canadian Government Railways, Winnipeg, Man.]

Mr. Gladstone declared “A book that will move many people of different temperaments, and different degrees of intelligence, must have power.” So it is with the individual: and because your friends in the complacent East think you undoubtedly possess the magnetic current and a warm heart, we are loth to separate from so much animated sunshine.

Colleagues, small and great, recount your generosity and regret departure, while those distressed mortals who knew your kindly assistance pour full the measure of credit.

If the public, and this galaxy of happy-go-lucky railroaders who foregather have imperfectly recited how they will miss you at quilting bees, it is not because they are hostile, but they lack Chantecler’s brazen crow.

As a scout of broad gauge calibre, tracking business to its lair, reconnoitering Indian bands or negotiating with sinner, saint and suffragette, you have been all things to all men, and along the tortuous trail they do say your sang froid, ingratiating manner and elegance of diction ranked not as common garden varieties.

The King’s currency, bestowed in embarrassing quantities, is apt to jolt one’s system into repudiating labor’s noble avocations; hence the modest proportions of this accompanying bag of francs, which your confreres--elderly, youthful, handsome--unhesitatingly tender you with earnest protests of regard.

You are now at the Hemisphere’s portal, where you can, without obstruction, behold the Fates unfolding your future; where old Sol, with blushing countenance, sinks in the “Pacific” without his bathing suit, and all supplicate you not to trip o’er the guy ropes when gazing at comets with the astronomers.

We trust the doors to preferment, now open, will disclose to you and yours the uneven highway of life growing smoother and wider, and may the blessing of good health crown all.

The Committee:--R. S. Lewis, L.V.R.; A. J. Taylor, C. M. & St.P.R.; J. J. Rose, C.P.R.; J. A. Richardson, Wabash Railroad; B. H. Bennett, C. & N.W.R.; C. E. Horning, G.T.R.

W. J. MOFFATT JOHN J. ROSE

_Passport Photograph Collection loaned by_

W. J. MOFFATT City Passenger Agent, G.T.R. Toronto
JOHN J. ROSE General Agent, Union Pacific Railway Toronto

Read from left to right--

W. ADAMSON T.F.A., N.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
S. A. BAKER G.A., C.G.W.R. Toronto, Ont.
B. H. BENNETT G.A., C. & N.W.R. Toronto, Ont.
F. BOWMAN C.F.A., C.P.R. Hamilton, Ont.
J. J. BRIGNALL T.P.A., Robert Reford Co. Toronto, Ont.
J. H. CALLAHAN Passenger Conductor, G.T.R. Goderich, Ont.
F. R. CALDWELL Manager, Cluett, Peabody Co. Toronto, Ont.
S. CROSSLEY Dining Car Conductor, G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
W. CORBETT T.P.A., C.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
E. J. DOWNEY Inspector, C. C. S. Bureau Toronto, Ont.
G. EASSON T.F.A., C.N.R. Toronto, Ont.
T. EVANS G.A., M.C.R. London, Ont.
F. C. FOY C.P.A., N.Y.C. & H.R.R. Toronto, Ont.
J. GRAY (late) Agent, G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
W. A. GRAY C.F.A., D.L. & W.R. Toronto, Ont.
W. GRUNDY Depot, T.A., G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
M. M. HAGARTY Advertising Department, C.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
J. C. HEATON Manager, Time Table Distribution Co. Toronto, Ont.
L. HOWE Traffic Department, Board of Trade Toronto, Ont.
D. M. JOHNSON Agent, G.T.R. Preston, Ont.
R. J. KEARNS New York Life Toronto, Ont.
J. W. MCGUIRE T.F.A., C.P.R. Hamilton, Ont.
S. J. MURPHY T.P.A., Canada S.S. Lines Toronto, Ont.
F. A. NANCEKIVELL Traffic Manager, Ford Motor Co. Ford, Ont.
A. E. PERNFUSS C.P. & T.A., G.T.R. Kitchener, Ont.
T. SYMINGTON Superintendent, Shedden Co. Toronto, Ont.
H. E. WATKINS G.E.C.A., G.N.R. Toronto, Ont.
G. C. WILSON T.F.A., Soo Line Buffalo, N.Y.
D. H. WAY Agent, T. & N.O.R. Cobalt, Ont.
H. E. UTTLEY Assistant Traffic Manager, Imperial
Oil Co. Toronto, Ont.
]

_Passport Photograph Collection loaned by Messrs W. J. Moffatt and J. J. Rose._

Read from left to right--

A. M. ADAMS Agent, G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
W. J. BURR S.P.A., G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
F. R. CLARKE S.F.A., G.T.R., Import Department Toronto, Ont.
J. M. COPELAND T.F. & P.A., C. & N.W.R. Toronto, Ont.
E. S. DAVIES Advertising Manager, C.N.R. Toronto, Ont.
H. T. DUFFY D.P.A., Soo Line Duluth, Minn.
W. FULTON Assistant Dist. Passenger Agent,
C.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
R. A. GILL T.P.A., G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
L. L. GRABILL General Baggage Agent, G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
T. J. HENNESSY T.F.A., L.V.R. Chicago, Ill.
F. V. HIGGINBOTTOM C.P. & T.A., C.N.R. Toronto, Ont.
C. E. HILLIKER D.F. & P.A., C.M. & St. P.R. Des Moines, Ia.
H. B. HOLLAWAY C.A., Adams Express Co. Toronto, Ont.
J. JOLLY S.F.A., C.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
S. R. JOYCE T.P.A., G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
C. M. KNOWLES C.T.A., N.Y.C. & H.R.R. Toronto, Ont.
R. A. LENNOX S.F.A., G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
A. J. LETCH Inspector, C.C.S. Bureau Toronto, Ont.
C. H. LOWN Traffic Mgr., Imperial Oil Co. Toronto, Ont.
D. A. MCCALL T.F.A., C.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
R. MCRAE Accountant, G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
R. G. MCCRAW Inspector, C.F. Association Toronto, Ont.
M. MACDONALD Assistant Inspector of Weighing,
G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
W. MCILROY C.C., D.P.A., C.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
T. MULLINS C.P.A., C.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
L. R. MULHOLLAND Kent, McLean Co. Winnipeg, Man.
G. G. O’FLAHERTY C. C., Sup’t Transportation, G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
W. H. POLLEY C.T.A., C.P.R. Toronto, Ont.
J. H. ROBERTS C.C., C.T.A., G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
W. J. RYAN Inspector of Trade-marks Toronto, Ont.
C. P. SARGENT T.P.A., White Star Line Toronto, Ont.
H. SCOTT T.C., C.O., G.T.R. Toronto, Ont.
F. H. TERRY T.A., G.N.R. Toronto, Ont.
G. M. THOMAS T.A., Canadian Government Railways Toronto, Ont.
E. F. WALKER Manager, Old Country Tours Toronto, Ont.
J. A. YORICK C.F. & P.A., C.B. & Q.R. Toronto, Ont.
]

THOSE UNDIGNIFIED BOX CARS

Some methods of the men who control their movements

When Mademoiselle Susanna Vere de Vere, haughty and capricious, talcumed and beflounced, rides east at 10:00 a.m., ensconsced in green plushed parlor car comfort, think you she recognizes as she rolls along, the significance of the irregular hedge that flanks for miles her chosen pathway? Can she see in that jagged sky line of uneven box car roofs, so unlike the matched uniformity of the coral beads in her necklace--the source of the revenue which purchased the ornament? Probably not. Does Oliver Opulence across the isle, with fattening jowls and the latest periodical, attribute his golfing privileges and bank balance to the agency of the lowly freight car? No, not in the fullest measure.

The routine duties of John Jones Limited in to-day’s strenuous commercial struggle are based entirely on what freight service has done or will accomplish for them, and during conferences with their purchasing and traffic assistants, concrete equipment needs are dealt with daily but the vital usefulness of each empty car as a retainer and carrier are thought of only in an abstract way, yet they are as essential as the “G.T.R.” or three daily meals. Not until such time as the advent of an industrial calamity that will destroy them all, leaving coal man, merchant and bacon baron stranded high and dry, will shippers unanimously appreciate their individual worth, and not until then will cease the desire of corporate interests to haul their valuable loads along this or that favored highway of steel. Not a pulley in manufacture could turn without their direct aid, meagre would be the housewives’ meals and pelts again be their children’s portion if the wheels refused to whirr: then indeed, would Mademoiselle Susanna Vere de Vere understand the sudden death of Pullman palaces from commercial paralysis.

A tortuous string of seventy freight cars in motion is not what you would designate as a “harmonious whole” in appearance. They remind you of a herd of elephants with baggy pants traveling trunk to tail, nor do these incongruous, ill-at-ease assortments of traffic _proletariat_ pick their company. The tall and the short, the lame, the halt and the blind they have always with them, and if a trig, shiny aristocrat once, costing approximately $1,200 to $1,500, (but to-day twice as much) that should be on his owner’s tracks, strays into line with this perambulating Coxey’s Army he soon gets the spots knocked off him, like a “rookie” enlisted with the regulars. They all receive awful treatment, they are side tracked, snubbed and roughly handled and though doctored, patched, likewise overburdened, they return more good for evil by feeding mice and men and machinery than any other medium. The funniest feature about these democratic go-betweens is that a loose jointed, squatty old party, rocking from side to side with the load in his protruding stomach and hardly able to keep step with the tribe, may have his “innards” stuffed with silks and satins to bedeck some slavish goddess of fashion who never appreciates what ship brought the feathers and finery to port--and such is human nature.

However, the officials of every railroad company from the president, traffic manager and “G.F.A.”, down the ladder to the journal oilers, make recompense, court the freight cars and strive mightily for the privilege of transporting their variegated contents and these are the men who make them make millions. It is a game with far reaching ramifications, a contest of competitors where brains and dispatch, service, sentiment and cold figures diversify the play. Some times it is as uncertain and exciting as draw poker with a brazen bluff cropping up, but the line that can deliver the goods usually scores and gathers in the ducats. The nets are out every hour of the twenty-four and they are out at every important geographical centre on the continent, making the sport in variety and complexion, more devoid of monotony than most mundane pursuits.

Traffic men seek every commodity from a carload of lemonade straws to a shipment of zinc dust from Japan for the Porcupine Mines, they talk on every topic from tunnel clearances to the effect of the Budget, and have interviewed specimens of the _genus homo_ as yet uncharted by the phrenologists. They study tact and diplomacy, but few have equalled the art of a Manitoba farmer whom it has been said, kept himself in coal for the winter by making faces at the passing “C.P.R.” firemen and engineers. Customers’ wishes, siding accommodation, enclosures, cartage, part lots, classification, temperature, icing and a thousand other conditions influence the movement. Among freight men resourcefulness is an ever present adjunct in devising ways and means to enlist adherence, placate the public, overcome delay and get around an obstacle, recalling the expedient of a new shedman who was puzzled as to how he could load in the “way” car a piece of crated machinery too large for the door. He resorted to the alternative of removing the casing, then easily transferring the unwieldly consignment inside and after recrating, left the later problem to the man who would deliver the goods.

“Work well begun is half done” saith the old saw, and the sage was right. Starting on a few calls some pleasant morning with the outside atmosphere exhilarating, if your initial visit happens on one of those considerate, business gentlemen who can devote three to thirty minutes of his time to your mission, and concluding the X.Y.Z. road might be worse, promises a share of the traffic he has offering, you usually approach the balance of the day’s duties with optimism. Experiences multiply, but this feeling will probably carry you past the resentful individual who holds a little stock of your Company and refuses business because his security is temporarily dropping and it will likewise help to cement acquaintance with the cautious man who would like to but fears his couple of cars would be held up or lost should Canada and the United States drift into war. Emboldened to continue the good work, you harken to the complaints of one of your local agents, both officious and secretive--who sends all his correspondence in under separate cover and wonders why it don’t receive prompt attention when the chief is away. If diminuitive this representative might become a detriment and antagonize trade and his running mate is the agent appointed by the operating department who proves a thorn in the flesh of the Division Freight Agent by snarling, rat-terrier, dictatorial demeanor until the shipping body in unanimous resolution declare “that agent cannot leave quick enough to suit me”. Hot on the heels of the visiting “D.F.A.”, who is supposed by many to always have an easy time, bobs up an obsequious Hebrew at the period of great car shortage, with a tale of woe about a man coming upon him just as he was loading a few bales and shouting “Here, what are you doing with my car?” It developed that the blusterer could not procure a car himself and bethought him to pounce on the inoffensive rag man and purloin the coveted empty box car.

Fortified by an agreement with an anxious fresh fruit buyer, whereby he is guaranteed forty refrigerator cars in return for their haul homeward a few hundred miles, a call is made on a canned salmon distributor. This is his acknowledgment to your opening salute. “Who told you I had a car of salmon? I have no salmon and am not thinking of fish just now--this isn’t Friday”. However, he proved amenable to reason and issued a routing order.

A Grand Trunk Railway commercial agent related to me recently the following outline of a verbal castigation administered to himself by a mourner who must have been wearing indigo spectacles: “The idea of giving business to ‘U.M.C.’ lines, we’ll have no truck or trade with them. It is very indiscreet of you to dare to try; when you can compete on an equal basis with the ‘C.P.R.’ then come in”. A well intentioned, but premature overture earned one young general agent, new to his territory, an undeserved rebuke in response to his civil enquiries: “Well, I guess I hav’nt anything to say to you to-day”.

“I came in primarily to ask you to take luncheon with me, would you join me at one o’clock?”

“No, I had my lunch at the proper hour” came the quick rejoinder. Fortunately, the balance of the day was spent among “white men” of whom there are 95 per cent. naturally inclined to transact business with reason and decency, and their broad guage tendency seems to expand in proportion to the magnitude and responsibility of their undertakings.

Another gentleman occasioned a good deal of laughter telling on himself the story of taking his new chief on an introductory tour and being embarrassed to learn that the first manufacturer they called on had been dead for a year, and the second one, whom our friend knew to some extent, asking him what his name was. It takes time to talk away or live down these little incidents. Now and then a modest shipper with about one car a year traveling in your direction, will unblushingly suggest that he be loaned one of your annual passes for a little trip down to New York, and I recall hearing of a wallet of transportation, in the wrong hands, being lost in the railway yards near Rochester.

A number of the boys remember certain shippers who have had an insatiable longing for some substantial token in reciprocity for the traffic they could control, with a leaning towards a variety of household furnishings and what-nots.

Patronage lists and their influence, if operative the wrong way, are often the invention of the evil one and nullify the efforts of a conscientious worker, otherwise in good standing with all parties. One day Billy A----, General Freight Agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway, called with a traveling representative on a certain undesignated Canadian biscuit factory: out came the list with the statement of the egregious young manager that “Your road is not using our product on its diners.”

“Well,” promptly responded the truthful William, “It may be they are not good enough”.

To elaborate further, a contractor erecting a building in a distant city for a firm doing a large outfitting and general selling business, routed twelve carloads of structural steel that he required, via the “P.D.Q.R.” A wide awake, aggressive competitor coveted the haul of the material and meant to have it. They promptly placed an $80,000 order for hotel requisites with the outfitting firm and the latter, feeling the pressure where it was intended to be felt, capitulated, assuaged the contractor’s rising ire in a monetary but lesser degree, which, of course, jilted the expectations of the “P.D.Q.R.”

A competing line with heavy purchasing appropriations has been known to often frustrate genuine tonnage hopes by wiring that the name of a shipper interested in a transaction, be removed from their patronage lists unless he immediately saw the error of his ways and banished consideration for a rival route or an M.P., in Victoria, B.C., we’ll say, may exert some influence he may have and busy himself by telegraphing to forward specific public works supplies from the east this way or that.

The staff of a district freight department may do considerable preparatory work regarding, for instance, the movement of Australian and New Zealand wool for Europe to find their plans upset by a necessary war-time embargo affecting the transport of sheep skins and crossbred wool through this port or that country.

The _bete noir_ of all railroad men is the shifty, unprincipled person who deceives you with a misleading yarn and means to do something else. A sample of this method of operating is outlined in the case following, and concerns a carload of pianos going from an Ontario town to Vancouver, B.C. Knowing his man, the consignee had telegraphed and also written the shippers “Route our car now loading ‘N.C.O. & B.R.R.’: under no circumstances deviate, pay no attention to other instructions, this is final.” To dull the watchfulness of the interested railways, Ananias declared the shipment would be held pending the arrival from elsewhere of an enclosure of four pianos, meanwhile laboring secretly to dispatch the complete shipment in the _interim_ contrary to instructions. Temporarily balked in his fell purpose, to disarm suspicion when interrogated, he actually ordered placed on his siding a suitable car as a screen or camouflage, but pursued his original plan. Not until repeatedly disciplined by the head office did this factory manager desist and finally unload the forbidden car and obey orders. Such an employee is a stumbling block to progressive business.