ing through the All-Canadian road north of Lake Superior, had not overlooked the advantages of a line south of the lake through American territory. During the construction of the main road it had built a branch from Sudbury to Sault Sainte Marie (Ontario), which faces the peninsula jutting northeast between Superior and Michigan. Once the main enterprise was consolidated, the management prepared to enter this new territory, with its forest and mining wealth and with the fertile fields of Minnesota, in which their old friend Hill reigned supreme, beckoning them from beyond. In 1891 they acquired a controlling interest in the stock of two United States roads, each a consolidation of many small lines, extending westward from Sault Sainte Marie (Michigan). The Duluth, South Shore and Atlantic, as afterwards completed, traversed the whole shore of the lake from the Sault to Superior. The Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Sainte Marie connected the Sault with Minneapolis and eventually, through extensions and purchase of other roads or controlling interests, gave the Canadian Pacific entry into Chicago and a connection between Minneapolis and the Canadian border.

To complete the transaction it was necessary to float nearly $47,000,000 of securities in London. While the roads in question were not in Canada, and while the relations between the Canadian Pacific and the Government had ended, the directors realized that an election in which the Government would be defeated would be fatal to their plans, particularly with an unsettled money market. Years of political conflict had identified the railway and the Conservative party in the public mind, so that although as a matter of fact a Liberal victory would not have altered public policy toward the road in the slightest, it might have jeopardized the success of the new financing. Accordingly in November, 1890, Stephen and Van Horne asked Macdonald whether there was an election in sight. He answered, no; not within ten or eleven months; he would go to the country now, but no campaign funds were in sight.

In February, 1891, Mr. Laurier and

Attorney-General Longley of Nova Scotia were traveling from Montreal to New York, where they were to speak at a dinner of the Canadian Society. Learning that Van Horne was on the same train, Laurier went into his car, where they chatted pleasantly till nearly midnight on matters far from railways or politics. Just as he was about to leave, Laurier turned to Van Horne.

"I suppose, since you are in the secrets of the Government, you can tell when the elections will be held," he said.

"I am not in the secrets of the Government," Van Horne returned. "Ask Sir John."

"Well, then," Laurier replied, "I may give you some news: Parliament will be dissolved before we return from New York."

Laurier went on to New York, and spoke as he had planned, emphasizing the need of closer trade relations between Canada and the United States; it was at this banquet that Secretary of State Windom was taken ill and died. Van Horne, though finding a melancholy satisfaction in the reflection that Windom's stroke had fallen on him immediately after a speech in which he had denounced the Canadian Pacific, had meanwhile had other matters to think of. He had been thunderstruck by Laurier's news. That night he had not been able to sleep; in the morning he cabled Stephen in London. Stephen replied that the news was incredible; that Laurier was not in the secrets of the Government, and that Macdonald's word was given. Before the day was over, they learned that the report was correct, and that Canada was soon to be in the throes of a general election.

It has usually been understood that the Government hastened the bringing on of the elections because of the evident growth in popularity of the Liberal demand for unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. Doubtless this was a factor in the decision, but the determining factor was the Canadian Pacific's necessity. necessity. Macdonald had spoken to Pope of his promise to Stephen and Van Horne. Whereupon Pope replied:

"That makes this just the time to bring on the election."

"Why?"

"The C. P. R. crowd simply can't let you lose, with all they have at stake: they will have to shell out as never before." The reasoning was irresistible, and the elections followed.

In the contest which followed, the most hard-fought in Canadian history to that day, the Canadian Pacific fought for the Government in public and private. The public opposition was based on the harm that would be done to Canada if the tariff bars were lowered and Canadian trade deflected to American railways and American cities. That danger must be averted, if not by legal monopoly, at least by tariff walls. In a forceful and telling letter to the Montreal "Witness" Van Horne put the case against unrestricted reciprocity more effectively than any other critic had done. But the company's action was not confined to argument in the public press. The "C. P. R. crowd" did "shell out," as Pope had prophesied, and shell out liberally, or rather Conservatively. All the influence of a great organization which ramified into every corner of the dominion, the votes of its employees, the prestige of its directors, were exerted without stint. When the votes were counted, the Government, though fought to a standstill in Ontario and Quebec, had triumphed by a narrow majority, secured,

in Cartwright's phrase, from "the shreds and patches of the dominion." What was more to the point, it was secured largely from the domains of the Canadian Pacific. There are few more astounding instances of the relation between politics and business than the fact that in every constituency but one through which the Canadian Pacific ran a Conservative was returned. The exception was Marquette, Manitoba, where Robert Watson's victory by six majority was attributed to certain oversights and to the wrong assumption on the Government's part that in this seat the Liberal candidate could not be beaten.

The election was over. The flag had been waved as never before. Macdonald's cry, "A British subject I was born, a British subject I will die," had been the keynote of the campaign. Thousands of Canadians had imagined the country's national existence and national honor were at stake, and voted to avert the dangers of too intimate trade connections with the United States and the risk of diversion of Canadian traffic to American railways. Now the country was safe, and those who had directed the puppets from behind the scenes were free to pour millions of British pounds into projects for the extension of Canadian roads into the United States.

O the employers of America; to the owners of lands, warehouses, factories, and railroads; to the propertied class, who are thieves according to Proudhon, but whose wits and whose masterfulness have wrought this nation to them, and in defense of them, much might be said. I am of their brotherhood. I am not the least among them. But I cannot praise them, for they have put themselves in the wrong. They, the chieftains of our people, for four generations have permitted their children, and even the children of the poor, to be taught that all men are born free and equal. It is a doctrine borrowed from the French encyclopedists and the madman Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose teachings formed the basis for that Declaration of the Rights of Man which ushered in a period of bloody communism in France. almost before the alphabet is memorized our children learn to believe in it, and so the ideal of human equality has become embedded in the national skull, whence perhaps it can be excised only by the surgery of disaster, as happened in France, as is happening in Russia.

Proudhon said that the man who exclusively possesses anything steals from mankind. Viewed from his angle, the statement is virtually tautological. However, biology and history unite to show that private ownership is the basic variations which has lifted man above his hairy brother, the ape; and a

T

T

world without private ownership is a world in which blunderers like Lenine will always strive to equalize humanity by obliterating the schism between man and his monkey kin.

But if Proudhon's doctrine hangs fetid on the breath of our people after their prolonged debauchery of idealistic dreams, be it remembered that their intoxication was contrived by leading citizens of the land. The masters of America have put themselves in the wrong. This is no easy admission for an elderly millionaire to make, but even a millionaire has reckless moments, and this is one of mine. Desiring to spur our work-people to greater efforts in the guerrilla warfare of industrial competition, we have hinted, intimated, stated, and finally preached, that since all men are born free and equal, every man is as good a man as his neighbor, and should strive to rise in the world; for cannot the son of the merest laborer become the President of the United States? During four generations we have affirmed that ambition is the most necessary virtue of man, and that contentment, or lack of ambition, as we have accounted it, is spinelessness and beneath contempt. We have iterated and reiterated that no man need be poor, that wealth awaits the taker; and we have repeated these and a hundred kindred sayings until the ferment has begun to work, and millions of the discontented howl for the realization of rainbows. We sowed ambition; we reap an attempt to