The TRAIL
of the
Swinging
Lanterns

A Racy, Railroading Review
of
Transportation Matters, Methods and Men

By John Morison Copeland

TORONTO, CANADA
ADDISON & MAINPRICE
1918

In compiling the miscellaneous array of facts embodied in the pen sketches arranged within the covers of this book, the principal object striven for has been to seek out, set down and thereby rescue from forgetfulness and the danger of extinction, a grist of information pertaining to local railway life in Canada and to men identified with international railway affairs.

The data is necessarily incomplete, owing to the embarrassment of available material clamoring for place and because the railways’ numerous departments harbor scores of brilliant officials and a host of yet undecorated aides, but the biographies, particularly, have revived some interesting early history which was the parent and foundation of present-day conditions.

The concentrated effort and predominant characteristics which eventually won prominence for the gentlemen herein featured may be an incentive and safeguard to young men and the journal is deferentially submitted for perusal to all readers who appreciate how paramount among vital essentials to progress and comfort are the railroads, but it is especially dedicated to those cosmopolitans whose duties are so closely interwoven with the daily transport of people and their natural and manufactured products.

In no other fields of endeavor does the spirit of genuine cameraderie and the bonds of unconventional fraternity exist more generally than among railway men in all branches—among allies and competitors alike—and it is hoped the work will prove to this irregular army of “thoroughbreds” a book of reference, a reminder later on of former devotees of the magnetic game and also perpetuate those splendid standards, enjoyable gatherings and ever changing activities of their day.

For the courtesy of reprinting privileges, where my earlier articles are concerned, I am indebted to “Busy Man’s Magazine,” “Canadian Century,” “McLean’s Magazine,” “Canada Monthly,” etc., etc., and gratefully acknowledge the voluntary kindness of friends who unlocked the storehouses of memory or cheerfully furnished desired photographs and engravings.

The indulgence of the reader is requested should he observe a discrepancy affecting the title, employer or location of any individual, resulting from change or promotion between the time of preparation and publication of these papers.

J. M. C.

To My Brother,
Whose Encouragement and Confidence Made Lighter the Task
of Writing These Manuscripts and Preparing
the Illustrations Herein.

6

S. E. MacKechnie

Mayor of Cobourg, 1853.

When Sir John Franklin, arctic navigator, with canoe crews of Indians and voyageurs, eastbound after exploring the Great Lakes, pitched wigwams in the summer of 1839 at the confluence of stream and lake where the nucleus of present Cobourg, Canada, was taking root, little did these adventurous and actual forerunners of easy steam locomotion think that from a point where they camped a railroad would thirteen years later bisect the unbroken forest. Yet, it is so, and the whirligig of time has, likewise, seen recorded the obituary of that railway—has witnessed the effacement of the name of those early laid metal ribbons from the time tables of a young country which still hungers and lobbies for more and more tracks and trams.

Cobourg and thereabouts, is ancient territory as settlements go nowadays. In 1796 the district was surveyed. Eluid Nickerson, who espoused the United Empire Loyalist cause, took out the first patent in 1802 during the reign of King George III., but in spite of its monarchial predilections, the locality has long been of interest to our cousins of high and low degree living south of Lake Ontario, and a few years after the construction of Cobourg and Peterborough Railway, of which I speak, several iron masters and capitalists from Pittsburg acquired the property, altering somewhat its original mission.

The prospectus of this pioneer Canadian line was mooted in 1851 by local promoters: it took definite form in 1852 and on February 7th, 1853, Lady Mayoress, Mrs. S. E. MacKechnie, officiated in the ceremony of turning the first sod amidst tremendous public enthusiasm. As early as 1844 a daily stage ran in winter from Peterborough to Cobourg and Port Hope, and in summer the steamboat “Forrester” plied to Harwood and connected with the stage coaches. Close in the wake of this propitious beginning construction advanced, while feathered and furry prowlers of the virgin woods had their curiosity piqued by strange sights and sounds. Under the supervision of chief engineer Ira Spaulding, contractors Zimmerman and Balch pushed the line through valley and glade to Rice Lake’s fertile, sloping shores at Harwood where, later, sawmills sawed the stately pines that arrived in drives from Otonabee. During the following year Mr. Zimmerman collaborated in the extension as far as Peterborough, his tragic death in the des Jardins Canal8 disaster at Hamilton, March, 1857, terminating a useful life. Steel rails were an experimental luxury, iron scarce and expensive and timber often replaced them. Antique locomotives with impossible superstructures coughed and squeaked along, meanwhile eating a mighty hole in the wood pile, for coal and oil burners were not contrived, and what a risk it was to venture between the oscillating cars. Though crudely equipped, the road was nevertheless, a startling and welcome innovation for abbreviating space. The Grand Trunk Railway had not yet been built and the saddle horse and coach were the only substitutes for pedestrianism. Picture, if you can, a journey inside a two teamed springless stage, tediously winding westward past bear haunt, swamp and river; for instance, over the historic, old military road from Kingston. It must have been a hunter’s paradise.

The bridging of Rice Lake was a large undertaking at the period and proved a burden from which the management never recovered. This structure became notorious later for several reasons. From Harwood to Tick Island, some distance off shore, a filling was made and the bridge trestles were projected two miles across the westerly loop of the lake to where Hiawatha Indian settlement still harbors the fishing and rice gathering sons and daughters of sires long since passed to the happy hunting grounds. You may see them any summer day vieing with “Alderville” redskins from near Roseneath, in deftly wielding the paddle, as of yore when their forebears fought fiercely all around that favored camping place.

In winter of 1857, when the frost and ice heaved the bridge, four-horse sleighs transported passengers inland between Harwood, the Indian village and station at Ashburnham, seven miles north. To take charge of this old depot, which afterwards became a canoe factory, Donald Sutherland was the first appointed and Mr. Roe Buck became the Cobourg representative. William Von Ingen, now collector of His Majesty’s Customs levy at Woodstock, Ont., collected tickets covering the run of about twenty-five miles which cost $1.00 per capital and entitled one to all privileges save the compartment sleeper and electric fans, which had not yet been adopted.

It is said that John Fowler, charter corporation member and first manager, whose regime did not fill the company’s coffers, made towards the close of his term, a financial coup d’etat with the Midland, Port Perry, Lindsay & Beaverton Railway. He was succeeded by Lieut.-Colonel D’Arcy E. Boulton, a Cobourg aristocrat who rented the “C. & P.” property in 1857 and battled valiantly against odds in an endeavor to place the road on a paying basis. This railway’s legitimate traffic—forest products and lumber—were hauled for several years from the interior to the docks at Cobourg, thence by schooner to various lake ports, but time wrought changes and debt became the most formidable obstacle to progress.

Lady Dufferin.

A distinguished passenger who rode over the C.P. & M. Ry., 1874.

It is recounted that one forenoon long ago the sheriff unexpectedly boarded a northbound “C. & P.” train on which the superintendent was also travelling.9 Although the latter was not a mind reader he had a presentment that the sheriff’s presence might not auger well for his particular department. Everything was as placid as the lake itself until the train approached the height of land at Summit, nine miles up from Cobourg, when the brakes controlling rear car in which the court official sat in tranquil state, were locked and the coupling pin withdrawn. A retrograde movement quickly followed and the sheriff was powerless to stem the progress of his unwilling hurry. As though the evil one was after him, down grade rolled the flustered occupant of the flying carriage to where it started. Nothing daunting, the sheriff procured a team and drove thirteen miles back to Harwood, but found on arrival that everything not nailed down, including attachable railway equipment, etc., had forsaken Northumberland and was transferred across the bridge to the next county.

Early in the day of September 7th, 1860, a “special” moved over the “C. & P.” conveying Edward, Prince of Wales and suite from Cobourg to Harwood en route Peterborough. As the old bridge was considered unsafe for this precious young patron and entourage, they were much interested in being ferried across Rice Lake to the Mississauga Indian settlement near the mouth of the winding Otonabee River, from which point the late Robert White, highly respected for leagues around, enjoyed the honor and privilege of driving Royalty and his retinue to Peterborough.

After the Civil War the road came into possession of a genial Virgianian, Colonel William Chambliss and his confreres, Messrs. Schoenburg and Fitzhugh from the South, with interests in Pennsylvania. Colonel Chambliss was elected managing director, the title was changed to Cobourg, Peterborough & Marmora Railway & Mining Company, and its new purpose was hauling iron ore destined Cleveland from Marmora mines to vessels at Cobourg. This ore was moved on scows from Blairton to Harwood.

The old Parliament of Upper Canada had incorporated the earlier organization and in 1869 an Act was passed legalizing the amalgamation of railway and mining company.

10

During the summer of 1874 the Vice-Regal couple, Lord and Lady Dufferin, participated in an eleven hour outing from Cobourg via C.P. & M.R. & M. Co., Harwood, Rice Lake steamer and Hastings, and extracts from the Countess’ description of their ore mine inspection and experiences, as set down in Her Ladyship’s diary at the time, reads as follows:—

It would appear that the bridging of Rice Lake was costly, but on account of engineering difficulties, not permanent. The alternate rigors of winter and spring reaction upset calculations as well as the bridge’s equilibrium. Those piles which had no foundation in fact—in the lake bottom, to be more exact—dangled from the upper work, an encumbrance instead of a support and many of the bolts disappeared, some claim by design of wrongly disposed persons. One autumn night, after a southbound train from Peterborough had passed over, the shivering spans succumbed to a gale and disappeared. To-day they remain the abode of lunge, bass and other amphibious denizens of the waters.

When the G.T.R. failed to popularize the line to Harwood for excursions, several rearrangements of the railway’s name and financial status subsequently occurred. Acts were passed by the Ontario Legislature and in 1887, after the sale of the Company’s bonds under an order of the Chancery Court the Federal Parliament incorporated the Cobourg, Blairton & Marmora Railway & Mining Co. to take over the property. The Municipality of Cobourg became at one time a guarantor in further reorganization. Presently, operation of the miniature system ceased altogether and protracted litigation was the precursor of dissolution. Thus did a budding nation in a constructive age behold a once famous railway rust into oblivion.

11

EXECUTIVE OFFICERS AND CHIEF PASSENGER DEPARTMENT REPRESENTATIVES OF THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY’S NUMEROUS AND SCATTERED FAMILY.
JANUARY, 1916

J. E. Dalrymple,

Geo. T. Bell,

Vice-President.

Passenger Traffic Manager.

Top rows—W. J. Moffatt, C.P.A., Toronto; L. L. Grabill, Asst. Gen. Bge. Agt., Toronto; M. O. Dafoe, C.P. & T.A., Montreal; J. E. Quick, Gen’l Baggage Agent; F. P. Walsh, G. M., Crosby Tpn. Co., Milwaukee; C. P. Orttenburger, C.P.A., Chicago; J. P. Shea, T.P.A., Boston; A. A. Gardiner, G.C., Montreal.

Centre Row—O. C. Bryant, T.P.A., Chicago; S. R. Joyce, T.P.A., Toronto; F. W. Hopper, G.A.P.D., San Francisco; R. L. Fradd, Montreal, Sec’y to G.P.A.; E. C. Elliott, C.C., P.T.D., Montreal; W. S. Miller, T.P.A., Montreal; C. W. Johnston, A.G.P.A., Montreal; D. B. Smith, C.P. & T.A., Portland, Ore.; A. B. Chown, T.P.A., Pittsburg; J. H. Burgess, G.A.P.D., Seattle; E. H. Boynton, N.E.P.A., Boston; C. S. Proctor, T.P.A., Toronto; J. E. Reilly, C.C., Chicago; J. D. McDonald, A.G.P.A., Chicago; F. P. Dwyer, G.A.P.D., New York; E. W. Smith, Supt., D. & P.C. Service; A. Kirk, Ex-C., Montreal; R. E. Ruse, C.P. & T.A., London; J. Quinlan, D.P.A., Montreal, and W. J. Gilkerson, G.A.P.D., St. Paul.

Lower Row—J. Anderson, C.P. & T.A., Hamilton; G. W. Norman, T.P.A., Chicago; D. P. Drewery, T.P.A., Buffalo; R. McC. Smith, C.P. & T.A., Detroit; J. E. Crossley, T.P.A., Montreal; C. E. Horning, D.P.A., Toronto; F. W. Wherrett, T.P.A., Detroit; W. S. Cookson, Gen’ Pass’r Agent, Montreal; G. N. Wilson, T.P.A., Kansas City; J. H. Corcoran, T.P.A., Moncton, N.B.; C. E. Jenney, G.A.P.D., Vancouver, B.C., and H. R. Charlton, Gen’l Advertising Agent.

12

Type of Grand Trunk Locomotive in use 1853

ONTARIO’S TWIN SISTER IS THE GRAND TRUNK RAILWAY

If a vivisectionist, adroit with scalpel and scissors, should dissect and remove the bone framework from the torso of any man, that man would collapse, and likewise, did Atlas or Sampson but lift the Grand Trunk Railway System from out the ballasted roadbed in the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec and contiguous territory, the extensive and most densely populated area of Older Canada would immediately become paralyzed and inert. Mankind in thousands would be without occupations, communication and the written word from the world outside would cease in three-quarters of the affected zone: again the over night journey to grist mills would resume, cattle be herded to market, the fruits of the earth would wither on the vine and the travelling public—wont to thoughtlessly grumble at imagined discrepancies in the time table—would submissively fall back on the tri-weekly stage.

How few of us reflect upon and appreciate the amount of planning and experiment, figuring and re-adjustment involved in the preparation of a “Grand Trunk” folder, where a maze of branch line trains that gridiron the country like a spider’s web, must be dispatched to dovetail with innumerable main line connections rolling to every point of the compass.

Before the first of her sixty-six birthdays was registered in the family bible at Headquarters in Old London, the nucleii of the “G.T.R.” were conceived and the infant projects inaugurated in that expectant era of active railway promotion which followed George Stephenson’s practical application of steam for motive power in England in 1815–25–45. Although the earliest railroads constructed in Quebec did not bear its name, these pioneer highways13 were merged, ere long, into the Grand Trunk Railway which spread its lengthening branches in all directions like the gnarled arms of the famous green bay tree.

Charles E. Dewey

Freight Traffic Manager, Grand Trunk Railway System, Montreal, Que.

The Grand Trunk Railway early became a definite medium in realizing the New World ambitions, spurring on hundreds of young English, Irish and Scotch men. Their methods of substantial construction and numerous ideas of system are yet extant with this great Canadian institution. It has also been a school of diverse experience and thorough training for thousands of graduates who gravitated to newer properties and to-day play their part in determining the policy or lubricating the clerical machinery of railroads in all regions enjoying the benefits of modern transportation.

On the eve of these happenings and during the period when the “Right of way” lands were being purchased under the discriminating supervision of the late John Bell—first and life-long General Counsel of the “G.T.R.”—the voyageur who did not travel by stage coach over corduroy roadways hewn out of the wilderness, was confined to desultory sailings on lake and bay or river. The daily stage coach, which ran both ways between Kingston and Toronto at that time, charged per person, Belleville to Kingston, Ten shillings; and Belleville to Cobourg, Twelve Shillings, Six Pence.

John Pullen

President, Canadian Express Co.

Clear to the retentive memory of thousands of early settlers is that nine days’ wonder, and since enduring boon, synchronizing in the arrival of the first railway train of the “G.T.R.” at their peaceful hamlet, grain elevator or river mouth. That was an event of superlative importance not fully understood. Like them, the “Old Reliable”14 was a budding enterprise, she was Ontario’s Twin Sister growing confident and expanding step by step, surmounting difficulties, each depending on the other, until now the great and comprehensive public utility we know so well and vitally need, together with her subsidiary properties, is a far-reaching international system comprising 8,000 miles of well equipped railway, embodying an immense investment. That investment, based on a long, discerning and steady look into the future—surely made by optimistic, adventurous men—began when the Canadas truly deserved the petite designation of colonies and the manner in which the expansion of the Grand Trunk Railway kept pace with the unfolding of our young nation’s wonderful possibilities is lucidly outlined in a meritorious editorial of January 12th, 1918, which the Montreal “Daily Star” has readily permitted me to reproduce below:—

W. P. Hinton,

Vice-President and General Manager, Grand Trunk Pacific Ry., Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Grand Trunk Standard Passenger Train 1918

W. H. Biggar,

Vice-President and General Counsel, Grand Trunk Railway System, Montreal, Que.

During that turbulent period in Britain’s history when Sir Francis Drake’s buccaneering exploits had Spain by the ears and intrepid Champlain was spying out the boundaries of Bay of Quinte, there flourished under the checkered reign of the first James in bonny Scotland, Herbert Biggar, and it is a coincidence that centuries after his descendents settled on the rim of the bay where the great explorer had camped. This Scottish gentleman was Laird of Barbine and Nethergloly and espoused Janet Maxwell, Balterson, in the Parish of Holyrood, who survived, dying in 1689, and their children were the ancestors of the subject of this sketch.

William Hodgins Biggar, called to the Bar in 1880, twice Mayor of Belleville, and in 1890 elected M.P.P. for West Hastings, Ontario, now director of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, and vice-president and General Counsel of the Grand Trunk Railway, was born in September, 1852, at the Carrying Place, an historic portage where no doubt, Samuel de Champlain and his Indian allies carried from Quinte Bay to Lake Ontario their supplies and canoes.

Late in the autumn, two thirds of a century ago when older units of the family were sailing westward with equipment and settlers’ impedimenta enroute their original location near Brantford, Canada, the voyageurs were frozen in and stalled by winter’s rigors and thus fate or fortune, unsolicited, determined a new world habitation, giving point to the proverb, “There is a destiny which shapes our ends rough hew them as we may”. From here it was that James Lyons Biggar, general merchant, often journeyed in the interests of East Northumberland to parliament in far off Quebec before Confederation and this sturdy trader of pioneering days was17 wont to accompany goods shipments from tidewater by wagon, coach and vessel to their western destination.

“There is luck in odd numbers”, said Rory O’More and as young Biggar was but one of nine lusty children—all of whom later attained individual prominence—he was not featured as a favorite. Who can tell to what influence his Celtic mother from the city of Dublin, whose surname and temperament he inherited, attributed the success of her son, perchance the good fairies or to the “Luck in odd numbers”. The acquisition of knowledge was easy for him because he gave the task his attention and his inclinations developed system in study. His preliminary education in the village and at Trenton Grammar School, culminated with the gilt lettered honor of Head Boy at Upper Canada College, Toronto, and that distinction has since been bestowed on one of his four children, Winchester, on the eve of his entry to McGill University and gravitation to the army. The mother of the interesting trio and the curley-headed dictator of the family, was Miss Marie Louise Ballou of New York.

A cardinal qualification, noticeable in the majority of leaders in Law and Commerce, is the ability to cast aside the superfluous, bare a proposition and promptly discern the gist of the matter; this qualification W. H. Biggar possesses, combined with a clear, well ordered mind and a splendid memory for facts and precedent. It won him the confidence of the late John Bell of Belleville, former General Counsel of the Grand Trunk Railway and his legal acumen soon became exact and expanded by contact with the ripe experiences in railway jurisprudence of his senior who took the young lawyer into partnership giving him charge of their civil practice. His penchant for deductions explains his skill as a billiardist and one time enthusiastic lawn bowler at home and on the greens at Niagara-on-the-lake, when he was President of the Ontario Bowling Association. He is decidedly deliberate towards all appeals for his opinion on any topic, does not make snap decisions and would never be caught in the fix of the man who jumped at the conclusion of a departing ferry boat and fell into the harbor.

In the capacity of General Counsel for G.T.R.-G.T.P.R., he has dealt with many weighty railway corporation matters and affairs of national import and—no doubt, participated prominently with Sir Wilfrid Laurier and his cabinet in governmental and financial endorsation of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway past and present.

Not long ago his interpretations of the intentions of certain clauses respecting the Government’s attitude towards the sale of bonds of the western section of the N.T.R., were sustained by the Privy Council at London and that body’s vindication of Mr. Biggar’s insight was equivalent to an immense saving in favor of the “G.T.R.”

With the strain of business he intersperses a lively participation in golf, always evinces a keen interest in good sport and when a younger man in Belleville owned and raced his yacht “Iolanthe” on Lake Ontario and across the bay beside his birthplace. He was also a bit of an angler and could pink the bull’s eye18 at rifle ranges. Many a time, when a boy, have I seen him galloping past in the saddle accompanied by (Justice) R. C. Clute, the late U. E. Thompson, then City Ticket Agent of the G.T.R., Thomas Ritchie, T. S. Carman, publisher of the “Ontario” and the late Senator Harry Corby. A gentleman of the old school, Will Biggar was as prompt to perceive the charwoman’s courtesy as he would be to acknowledge the gracious inclination of the city’s first lady.

Like some men in public life, he is reserved, almost shy of the lime light, but an interesting companion among his intimates and a favorite with little children and generally popular, so much so, that he proved a rara avis in local politics when he carried the Liberal standard to victory in “Tory” West Hastings in 1890 with the untrumpeted aid of many Conservative friends, it has been said. He was always a “man’s man” but now gives the Mount Royal and other Clubs only such a share of his limited leisure as domesticity will permit.

19

Photograph—Courtesy I. Wilson.

Reproduction of an early type of steam locomotive used by the Great Western Railway of Canada and photographed on the area then known as “Kent’s Paradise”, below Dundurn Park, Hamilton, Ont., in 1864. This locomotive was the first mogul built in Hamilton shops.

The occasion was the visit to Canada of Sir Thomas Dakin, English Chairman of the Great Western Railway, whose name appears on the engine. A key to the interesting headquarters group beside it is given below and some of the gentlemen in the picture still survive.

Turning the first sod, Toronto, Canada, 1869, Toronto and Nipissing Railway

Photograph courtesy of Gooderham Estate.

The Toronto & Nipissing Railway, traversing the territory between Toronto, Ont., and Coboconk, now a “G.T.R.” branch serving Markham, Stouffville and Blackwater, was inaugurated in 1869 and built by Chief Engineer Edmund Wragge for the promoters.

The line was opened to Uxbridge, September 14th, 1871, amid great rejoicing and enthusiasm and an oil painting from the brush of B. Armstrong, commemorating the scene, with the elaborate decorations of that thriving agricultural centre, was presented by the President, the late John Shedden, to William Gooderham, Junior, Vice-President and Managing Director of the Toronto & Nipissing Railway Company.

The personnel of the prominent men of a past generation who were present at the turning of the first sod in 1869 at Toronto, as they appear in the accompanying photograph, is as follows:—

John Quirk

Wingham’s Veteran Conductor, Retired.

How many amongst you wide-a-wake and well-informed commercial men and transportation people, who read these lines, can explain where was and what became of the Erie & Niagara Railway, Canada. A gentleman born in 1833 at Lungar, Ireland, not a great distance from Ballykilbeg, known as John Quirk, Esq., Wingham, Ont., would, if interrogated, inform you that the railroad referred to originated at Lake Erie’s shore at Fort Erie, Ont., and terminated at historical old Niagara-on-the-Lake, where Lake Ontario’s blue waters lave the sloping shore.

The nucleus of that highway—now a “Michigan Central” branch line serving the fruit belt—was surveyed and laid with wooden rails by Gilbert McMicken between 1835–1841 and cost 19,000 pounds. Its motive power was an old grey horse and traffic crossing from England in ships via Montreal, around and over the different rapids and river to Toronto, was transported by Mr. McMicken and his dapple equine engine the nine miles from Queenstown, a grain depot on the Lake Ontario level, to Chippawa, beside Lake Erie, where it was again entrusted to vessels bound to the rim of civilization then at Sault Ste. Marie. The passenger fare from Queenstown to Chippawa was 2s–6d. Gilbert McMicken was a patriarch in the forwarding business, he also built the first suspension bridge at Queenstown where a horse ferry plied and there, in 1846, his heir “Ham.” G. McMicken, later European Traffic Agent of Great Northern Railway, London, England, set foot on terra firma. Permit me to add here, that the latter’s son, E. G. McMicken, is General Passenger Agent, Pacific Steamships Company, San Francisco.

Mr. Quirk would explain also, that he first started railroading on that line as baggageman in 1867, and in three months’ time accepted a conductorship of a regular train running between these points. In the absence of the present Buffalo-Bridgeburg international steam highway, built in 1873–74 by G.T.R. and G.W.R., jointly, United States traffic crossed from the foot of Main Street, Buffalo, by boats which old timers will remember as “Florence”, “Grace Dormer” and “Ivanhoe”. From Niagara-on-the-Lake passengers made the trip to Toronto in the “Rothsay Castle”, “City of Toronto” &c., &c., forerunners of the splendid craft which now transport their children and grandchildren on22 business or pleasure bent. William A. Thompson secured the first charter for Erie & Niagara Railway and the Great Western Railway surrendered their lease of it in 1870. This road underwent changes in fortune, emerging as a link in the Canada Southern Railway but to-day survives under the domination of Michigan Central Railway.

RAIL COURTESY

Guard: “Now then, Missis, are you first-class?”

Passenger: “Purty middlin’ thank ye. How’s yourself?”

From this embryo period imagine the perspective offered the retentive and vigorous memory of an eighty-four year young veteran like genial John. He has seen a lot of Ontario in the making and a host of travelers and transients have seen him in Great Western and Grand Trunk trains. It has been declared that the travelling man of other days, with fourteen years’ experience on the rail—devoted seven years to his business and other seven to waiting for trains at Harrisburg. From this staid burg Mr. Quirk watched the Wellington, Grey & Bruce Ry. extend northward while he officiated as conductor over each section when laid down. Elora and Fergus were reached in July, 1870, Palmerston, 1871, and Southampton in 1873. They considered themselves fortunate if the trains did not leave the tracks more than three times a week as the new portion was used without delay and formality as a means of accomplishing a further leg of the journey. Prior to that time the tedious and lumbering stage coach was the only long distance substitute for shank’s mare in reaching a hundred towns and villages which the Grand Trunk serves to-day, thus aiding a battalion of drummers in the vital matter of earning a living. John Quirk was long a respected citizen of Kincardine and covered the run from there to Brantford and Hamilton for twenty years. He punched the tickets of thousands of travelers using23 the London, Huron & Bruce R’y, who remember his brusque but cheerful manner and woe betide the luckless bride and bridegroom who happened to entrust themselves to his care when making the initial trip in double harness. He never did possess a voice as soft as a sighing zephyr and he was ever an incorrigible tease.

Our subject was the contemporary of such men as W. R. Callaway, widely known General Passenger Agent, Soo Line, Minneapolis, when he was agent at Paisley “in them days”, of Adam Brown, Hamilton’s postmaster, after whom a “Great Western” locomotive was named, W. K. Muir, W. J. Spicer, John Labatt and scores of others.

He was in his prime when a dozen United States railways competed vigorously for the traffic moving via Chicago and St. Paul during Manitoba’s first boom before the C.P.R.’s entry into Winnipeg in 1885.

Michigan Central

“THE NIAGARA FALLS ROUTE”

Mr. Quirk voluntarily resigned from G.T.R. service in 1905, enjoying the24 respect and favor of the Company’s officials as well as the friendship of the rank and file. He keeps in touch with the railway world, the trains and former associates by occasional jaunts around about, and he will wager his bonnet, his best jack-knife and even his boots, any day, that his watch regulates the sun’s movements. He is a collector of pictures, walking sticks and clocks, and must be a “freetrader” for at one time he was notorious as a bargainer and “unsight and unseen” artist.

If he likes you he will procure anything one desires from a dozen fresh eggs, a Latin recipe for rheumatic gout to a flagon of nut brown ale, and “Here’s the old spite to you all”.

The history of the Emerald Isle is in his book-case, her map is on his desk, and the Irishman’s ready answer still springs quick from the tongue of this lively, eighty-four year old colt, ex-conductor John Quirk.

❦ ❦ ❦

THE LUCK OF A LIGHT-HEARTED “LANDLUBBER”

Avast, my hearties, port your helm. The sun is over the yard-arm.

C. & N.W.R. Conductor Cornelius O’Konor, from Oconomawoc, a dry land pilot, visited under pressure, a Chicago departmental store recently with his wife. In her dauntless quest for the elusive bargain she led him here and marched him there: into the basement and up the stairs until fatigue made him hanker for home. Refusing her coaxing to make one last trip to the roof before the store closed, O’Konor dropped on a nearby chair while his wife made the ascent for a little “burnt onion” dream of a hat.

Her spouse relaxed, tilted back his chair, cupped his “Christie” on his knees and unexpectedly slept the sleep of the just conductors. When Madam O’K—— returned in the wake of a stream of charitable departing shoppers and awakened her lord, she found in his hat $3.49. Now he wants her to spend their vacation there.

Saturday Night

“GRAND TRUNK” CONDUCTORS

David J. Dinan; Hugh O’Donnell; Alexander Muir; Allan Eby; William Frost; James Guthrie; Welland Strong

The Marquis of Lorne graced the ceremonies with his presence and traveled from Toronto to Milton and return by special train.

Lord Lorne can be recognized standing in the centre of the official group and the party about him include George Laidlaw, Toronto, promoter and President of the line, John C. Bailey, Toronto, an outstanding figure at the time, who mapped the route of a dozen Canadian railways and made the survey—“Bailey Route”—of the T. & N.O.R. He was the engineer of the Credit Valley Railway and Harry Crewe, Toronto, was his chief assistant. To the right can be discerned the late James Ross, a young Scotch surveyor and engineer from Kingston, New York, in charge of construction, who afterwards became the Montreal millionaire.

Among others in this photograph are—Honorable Geo. W. Allan, Senator, Honorable John McMurrich, M.L. C., Toronto, James Beatty, K.C., Mayor of Toronto, Ross McKenzie, accountant with the Credit Valley Railway, who probably was Canada’s most famous lacrosse player, and Wm. Taylor, secretary for James Ross.

27

STREETSVILLE JUNCTION, SEPTEMBER 19th, 1879

Train sheet and entries thereon the day of the Governor General’s Special.

28

Courtesy Hamilton Spectator.

THE CRUSADE
OF
UNITED STATES RAILWAY INTERESTS IN CANADA

John Bull’s eldest daughter, Canada—recently eulogized as his fairest by the Honorable William H. Taft—is no laggard in recognizing opportunity as it ebbs and flows in the great, scientific game of trade. Like our wide-awake neighbor to the south, she inherits from commercial and speculative England the bartering instinct, and is willing enough to emulate, in a modified way, cousin Columbia’s obeisances to the goddess of commerce. The goddess, aforesaid, has been an active dame and most aggressive throughout North America during the past half century. To further her aims, enthusiastic disciples have achieved such marvellous feats, especially in railroad construction and transportation methods, during the period mentioned that comparisons, invidious or otherwise, are well-nigh compulsory.

The prairie schooner has made a squeaky exit from the drama of locomotion into museums and the tortuous, blazed trails of the gold seekers of ’49, minus kinks and humps, are now the routes of many lines with trackage contributing to an aggregate of 256,547 miles of railway which 2105 roads have under operation to-day in United States alone. In 1860 the Union possessed only 30,626 miles of steel.

Fifty years ago the fruits of opportunity in the middle and golden west appeared to the denizens east of the “Missouri” to ripen and require plucking all at once, and the termination of the Civil War signalled the inauguration of extravagant railroad ventures. Ambition fired the mind of the restless native and that big, swelling, polyglot immigration pouring into the “Land of Liberty,” needed space and breezy fumigation. Afterwards, they had to be fed and equipped, which, pursuant to the laws of demand and supply, materially increased consumption. Responding to the goads of progress, the railroads extended, paralleled and criss-crossed the “other fellow” in the dignified29 scramble for a slice of the melon of prosperity. The slogan was and has ever been, “More Passengers,” “Increased Tonnage”: import, export, interline and local business all comprised grist for the mills. About the time mercantile houses were becoming inoculated with the “commercial traveller” idea, a small squad of travelling railroad representatives, in open formation, were training observing optics on prospective traffic. In this, the eastern group of railroads were slightly in advance of their newer, western connections.

As far back as 1868 New York and New England State railways—the nuclei of gigantic present day systems—grew interested in international trade and thrust their tentacles across that imaginary line of demarkation bisecting the great lakes, into Ontario and Quebec. Mr. E. L. Slaughter entered Canada forty-eight years ago as representative of the “Erie” and is said to have been the first foreign line travelling agent to invade British domains on such a mission. Some Canadian merchants no doubt, remember this Southern gentleman who occupied an office at the corner of Scott and Wellington Streets, Toronto. John Strachan, genial and popular, followed him and for many years graced the position, with Mr. M. McGregor, inscrutable and keen, as right bower. S. J. Sharp was also an active agent of that system in Ontario. Those were the days of the “Merchant’s Dispatch,” 1870, the days when John Barr in the early eighties trod the boards boosting the “Blue Line,” and his understudies, A. F. Webster, Bob Moodie, Charles Holmes and F. F. Backus, sallied forth from the corner of Church and Colborne Streets, originally laboring in the same cause. Afterwards, T. J. Craft, and subsequently S. Hyndman, made predatory incursions from Detroit for the “Blue Line.” Mr. Craft was once agent at Galt, Ont., and an organ, the product of his skill, is, I believe, in good order to-day in a church in that Scottish burg. The distinctive term “dispatch” I mention, was applied to the earliest systematized methods, operative within a railway organization, for tracing perishable or timed freight and transporting it via most direct routes in cars of a uniform dimension, color, etc. Ere long, “Great Eastern” and “National Dispatch” sprang into existence. Hot on their heels came the “Hoosac Tunnel Route” and “West Shore” bidding for favorable consideration through the medium of indefatigable Joseph Hickson.

Not until 1901 did W. A. Wilson, a graduate of that school, and formerly with the “Fitchburg,” assume control of the “N.Y.C.” merged freight interests. Louis Drago and Frank C. Foy supervised passenger affairs for the consolidated lines.

At that period there was more talk in Canada of reciprocity with United States than there may be again. Uncle Sam’s politicians were wont to shun the subject, but the interchange of traffic grew apace. Emboldened by their competitors’ success, the “Lackawanna Road” sent an emissary into Ontario and they “have stuck,” George Bazzard campaigning for years for that interest until age caused him to make place for A. Leadley, now at the helm. 1884 saw the advent of the “Lehigh Valley” and Duncan Cooper. Robert Lewis, then in his prime, was busy making hay, years before their permanent office was decided on. He was a practical student of the “Morse” code at Suspension Bridge in 1855 when the first near-modern structure spanned Niagara River. Thirty years ago he presented his card in “York” state as representative of the “Great Western.” Only recently came the “Pennsylvania” with Don McKenzie as sponsor and succeeded by L. J. Fox and Messrs. Stackpole Plummer, and Little.

30

Ten Hale and Hearty Gentlemen Linking the Past and Present. Each Stalwart in the upper row has completed 50 years’ active service. Their companions are vigorous and capable, with splendid records.

A
J. A. Richardson,
Midland Railway, Millbrook, Ont.,
Canadian Agent,
Wabash Railroad Co.

B
N. Weatherston,
Grand Trunk Railway,
General Agent,
Intercolonial Railway.

C
F. J. Glackmeyer,
Ticket Clerk,
Great Western Railway, Toronto.
Sergeant-at-Arms, Ontario

D
George Ham,
Newspaper Man, Raconteur,
Diplomat,
Canadian Pacific Railway.

E
Richard Tinning,
Wing Shot, Oarsman, Vocalist,
Grand Trunk Railway,
All The Way.

F
R. L. Nelles, Lieut.-Col.,
Buffalo & Lake Huron Railway,
Grand Trunk Railway,
Toronto.

G
W. R. Callaway,
G.T.R. and C.P.R.,
G.P.A., Soo Line, Minneapolis,
Noted Advertiser

H
Alfred Price,
Credit Valley Railway,
Ass’t. Gen’l. Manager, E.L.,
Can. Pac. Railway, Montreal.

I
Wm. A. Wilson,
Grand Trunk Railway,
Gen’l. Can’n Freight Agent,
New York Central Lines.

J
W. J. Grant,
Midland Railway,
Port Hope “Mobile & Ohio,”
Dis’t. Freight Agent, C.P.R.,
Hamilton, Ont.

31

A large percentage of the public have enjoyed or know of the splendid passenger equipment and service some of these railways, in conjunction with Canadian trunk lines, offer to-day between Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton and Atlantic Seaboard. No doubt the reader who has attained the age of 45 years could develop a comparative mental picture of his first train ride, its discomforts, shortcomings and quaint paraphernalia. The demands of the age and growth of travel account for “the milk in the cocoanut.” Before the war, the average number of trains crossing the line via Rouse’s Point, N.Y., was 134 per month, and in that time they transported 9,627 passengers southward. At Newport, Vt., 160 trains entering United States yield a monthly patronage of 6,897 people. Probably you are curious to learn how it is at Niagara Falls, N.Y. This accessible and world-famous spot, redolent with much that is historic and tragic, is the magnet which attracts or ushers into the State of New York 20,000 souls a month and 700 trains of all railroads are pressed into service to cater to the modern craze to be “on the go.” These authentic figures do not include pedestrian traffic.

Compare the tonnage of forty years ago, and the leisurely dispatch it was given, with the daily carloads containing a multifarious assortment of perishable commodities and staples which now make regular, scheduled runs of 24, 36, and 48 hours between United States points of origin, the docks at Portland, Boston and New York and distributing centres in Canada. Twelve to fifteen hundred tons of import merchandise for Ontario destinations per month, apportioned to each of the half dozen competitive eastern “U.S.” lines, is a conservative estimate of what is handled. They bring in hardware, silver novelties, locks and clocks from Connecticut; tools, machinery and electrical supplies from Massachusetts and New York; cement and coal from Pennsylvania; early table delicacies from Maryland, and off ocean vessels, English fabrics, weaves from Scotch and Irish looms, German toys, Parisian frocks and bonnets, as well as tons of express matter and the theatrical accessories which accompany the thespians, prestidigitators and slap-stick artists. One of these eastern lines, with a strong weakness for fruit shipments, transports to the international bridges during the season, 125 carloads a month of incoming Cuban pineapples, Costa Rica bananas and Mediterranean lemons. The local and through eastbound tonnage secured by interested railways receives equal dispatch, exceeds that average and includes large quantities of apples, cheese, eggs, flour, implements, lumber, meats and poultry which probably approximate a combined monthly output of 1,200 carloads. It may be news to some of the uninitiated to hear that 1,500 carloads of Ontario grown turnips are shipped annually in the autumn for consumption in the United States. It is not surprising, therefore, that the big “American” carriers hasten to augment their revenues by coaxing and nursing this growing trade.

R. M. Melville, R.N.,

General S.S. Ticket Agent, Toronto and Captain, retired H.M. M.M., “S.S. Pekin.”

In 1875 the complacent east languidly condescended to heed insistent whispers concerning Canada’s vast Northwest. The tide of travel was diverging and began to carry with it in that direction prospectors, homesteaders and adventurous merchants bent on spying out locations in the prairie El Dorado. Dependent, of course, they levied on the mills of the east for food, clothing and32 implements. About this time Sir Hugh Childers, London, England, occupied the President’s chair directing the destinies of the Grand Trunk Railway, and the contemporary Canadian Pacific Railway official was (Sir) William Van Horne. Lucius Tuttle, President of Boston & Maine System, D. McNicoll, Vice-President, and C. E. E. Ussher, Passenger Traffic Manager, Canadian Pacific Railway, later on in the first flight and noteworthy examples of what determination and capacity accomplish, were going through a “course of sprouts” with Ontario lines which afterwards lost identity. Robert Kerr, former Passenger Traffic Manager “C.P.R.,” was “G.F. & P.A.” of the Northern Railway, and in his office situated at the foot of Spadina Avenue, Toronto, Tom Marshall and Henry Jago shoved the quill. Mr. Jago recently relinquished the duties of “G.E.P.A.” West Shore Road at New York. Henry Bourlier, so long associated with J. D. Hunter as western representatives of the Allan Line, was in 1874 ticket agent of G.T.R., in the old depot, and Tommy Jones was City Ticket Agent, Great Western Railway. Shippers hereabout will remember John Porteous, G.F.A., G.T.R., Montreal, Arthur White, G.F.A., Midland Railway, Port Hope, Ont., Jim “the penman” Thompson of the C.P.R. and Malcolm Murdock. Then it was that the star of Geo. B. Reeve and W. E. Davis began to twinkle; likewise, John W. Loud. All in modest positions at that time, they were fitting themselves for the exalted places they afterwards honorably filled in shaping the policy of the “Grand Trunk” and “Trunk Pacific” systems.

The majority of these and other officials had frequent business intercourse with the various United States railway agents who visited Canada.

In the year 1877 Mr. A. H. Burnham made his initial bow in Ontario representing Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. This move was significant, indicating the expectations of western roads based on the interest Manitoba’s commercial future had awakened. In July, 1878, the late James M. Taylor, prior to that time General Freight Agent and Superintendent, St. Lawrence & Ottawa Railway, had the distinction of establishing at Toronto the first permanent western line office in Canada. He was appointed General Canadian Agent of the “St. Paul Road.” Unlike any competitor, that railway maintained an agency in Ontario without interruption for three decades. Andrew J. Taylor joined his father in February, 1879, succeeding him several years ago when the former transferred to Pittsburg. These gentlemen have ever been regarded as pioneers and charter members of the foreign railway colony, highly respected by a legion of friends. James M. Taylor, a man of sterling personal characteristics and business acumen, who appreciated and sustained a clever hand in a quiet rubber at euchre, chose for headquarters a suite of rooms within a door of the northeast corner of Front and Scott Streets, then the hub of mercantile activity in Toronto. A neighbor was Mr. Richard Arnold, for a long time City Passenger Agent in charge of the “G.T.R.” office located on the aforesaid corner. Mr. Arnold’s daughters became respectively,33 the wives of William Wainwright and James Stephenson, two notable figures of the old regime. The former died when Fourth Vice-President of the “G.T.R.” and his erstwhile confrere, I believe, lived in retirement in England until death. Mr. Arnold numbered in his staff the late well-known “Phil.” Slatter; a junior assistant was Mr. C. E. McPherson, now A.P.T.M., C.P.R., at Winnipeg, who 35 years ago left “G.T.R.” ranks to travel in New England for the “Rock Island Road” and J. B. Tinning. C. W. Graves imbibed from the same seasoned chief preliminary hints on how to handle the dear public and look out for the elusive traveller who was not above licking into illegibility the date on expired tickets.

John B. Tinning,

T.P.A., C.P.R., formerly with G.T.R. and R. & O.N. Co.

Messrs. V. M. Came, W. Barnes and Sam. Beatty soon followed Mr. Burnham of the St. Paul Road to further the interests of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway, but were transferred before many moons had silvered the landscape. The two Jacks, “Morley” and “Winnett” swung into line in 1879 and did good work in both departments for the “C. & N.W.R.,” opening an office in Toronto in the old Baldwin Building, I understand, in 1880.

John Morley long ago forsook the excitement of the road. He died at Winnipeg during the summer of 1908, and interment occurred at Toronto, where his family is well known. The mantle of these gentlemen fell naturally on the shoulders of a sturdy Spartan, Burton H. Bennett, cryptic, yet merry, who jumped into the game with a will and has won an enviable reputation in the dual position.

The “Burlington Road” was right up on the firing line, looked after by a gentleman bearing the uncurtailed and historic cognomen, John Quincy Adams Bean, from “way down east.” After him, in order, appeared Messrs. Badgeley, Simpson and John A. Yorick. The late Joe Simpson was always happy if his road secured patronage in regular twos and threes. Not every one knows that he was for a few hours an unwilling guest of the “Fenian” leader O’Neil in 1866, and had been with M.K. & T. and T.St.L. & K.C.

Brilliant, well-informed, J. Francis Lee represented the “Rock Island-Albert Lea” combination, D. J. Peace sought freight for them and Eben MacLeod was located at Montreal somewhat later for “C.R.I. & P.” Such watchful competitors as “Great Western Railway,” featured by Messrs. Ridgedale, Noyes, Storr and Baker, and “Union Pacific Ry.” with Ira P. Griswold in the van, M. C. Dickson and J. O. Goodsell holding power later, before Geo. Vaux and J. J. Rose took up their work. Charles A. Florence, an “Illinois Central” Agent, made Berlin—now Kitchener—his headquarters.

Geo. B. Wylie

Traveling Passenger Agent Illinois Central Railroad

The “All Rail” mediums then available for transporting man and beast destined California, the Dakotas and Manitoba from Old Ontario, were “Grand34 Trunk,” “Great Western,” “Credit Valley,” and “Canada Southern,” covering the distance as far as St. Thomas and Detroit, thence via “Michigan Central” and Wabash Railroads to Chicago. Tom Cochrane, R. W. Youngs, Bob Middleton, J. W. Kearns and G. C. Wilson follow the footsteps of predecessors and patrol that neighborhood now. As travel increased from a dozen or two people to an occasional weekly carload, and more, the number of migratory railroaders multiplied. Oldtimers will recollect some of those big hearted, brainy hustlers including Sam Seymour of the “Pennsylvania,” Dave Cavan, formerly of Stratford, John Laven, off the “Iron Mountain,” representing “M.C.R.,” Charles Ousterhouse, T.P.A. N.Y.C. Lines, Geo. B. Wyllie for “L.S. & M.S.” and later in full charge of “Ill. Cent. Ry.” affairs in Canada, and the late much lamented J. Nelles Bastedo, who shipped from Barlow Cumberland’s service several years ago to travel for “Santa Fe System.” Joe Rattenbury, who twenty-five to thirty years back used to stow away at his place in Clinton in one night as many as 18 of these railroading nomads and cosmopolitans, often repeats a story the wiseacres will recollect about his brother “Ike” and laconic “Bass.”

The many sided men above enumerated made it their duty to assist with Customs formalities at the frontier and also assuage the fears of intending passengers trembling at the prospect of meeting in Chicago that much heralded and maligned bugaboo the bunco steerer.

It is worthy of remark that while to-day the railroad companies caution and forbid passengers riding on the platforms, thirty-five years ago the travelling public swarmed on that perilous projection, on the steps and quite often took possession of the car roofs with a nonchalance that would make the cold chills play peek-a-boo up and down your spine. How many of the lads and lassies in this year of grace would have the temerity to sally forth, for instance to the London Fair, decorating the top of a flat car rigged up with benches for the occasion? Your fathers and mothers did it.

The patronage of the farmer and his brawny sons, who had visions of gang plows and waving wheat, was an important desideratum in that era. Party leaders were “some pumpkins” and they puffed and spat over many a fragrant cheroot while sipping their “ponies” and “bootlegs” in company of expectant agents.

Charlie McP—— tells a tale of an exodus of the boys over the trail of the lonesome pine to some silent place near Coboconk where the villagers were to meet them to consult. To introduce the serious talk of tickets, rates and routes, some foreign line spokesman suggested a mild libation all hands round.35 Agreed! Not to be outdone, his neighbor ordered again something out of the lamp for the lords and laity: partaken ad libitum, in extenso. Now me! It’s your turn, and so the hours wore on, your Uncle Dudley Hayrick taking on his grist at minimum cost, business postponed and county council adjourning to reconsider the tax rate.

Honorary Judges, Clinton Fat Stock Show, April, 1912
Two generations pictured beside the Rattenbury House.

R. G. McGraw, Soo Line; H. E. Watkins, G.N.R.; W. Hood, C.N.R.; F. A. Nancekivell, Soo Line; David Forrester, Gentleman-Farmer; G. Barnes, W.C.R.; A. J. Taylor, C.M. & St. P. R.; Host Joe, Rattenbury; J. J. Rose; Robert Reford Co., R. J. S. Weatherston, G.T.R.; F. H. Terry, G.N.R.; W. Jackson, C.P.R.; H. Macdougall, G.T.R.; R. Middleton, M.C.R.

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME

As the train slowed down at a busy country station a man excitedly put his head through the open coach window. “A woman in here has fainted,” he cried, “has anyone got any whiskey? Quick!” A philanthropist reached within the recesses of his unmentionables and handed a bottle to the enquirer with an 18 karat thirst. The latter frantically uncorked the flask, put it to his lips and took a noble pull, “Ah”, he sighed, “that’s better, it always did upset me to see a woman faint.”

Presently the good blood of Ontario, and some bad stuff, was rolling westward at the rate of two and three regularly arranged for trains of nine to thirteen loaded cars each week. The personal effects and stock of the settler went along too, the owner ensconced occasionally in a tourist sleeper jolting along at the end of the string, and eager railway companies took turns in hauling the prize. Excitement ran high. The wires were kept hot36 about special or inadequate equipment, conflicting rates and alleged unconstitutional moves of opposing forces.

It was no uncommon occurrence to convene a meeting in hotel parlor or little red schoolhouse and there agents present would, in turn, give the agriculturist samples of terseness or spell-binding eloquence. Imagine the persuasiveness that was pitted against the farmer’s cautiousness or distrust. Recall, ye of good memory, if you can, the epigrams, arguments and bon mots which rolled off the ready tongues of a dozen or more jovial pilgrims from o’er the border; for instance, M. McNally, representing “St. P.M. & M.R.” a fowl fiend who could eat poultry five times a day, Charlie O’Connor with the “Northwestern,” Con. Sheehy, that urbane, silk tiled gentleman sent over by the “Wabash,” A. C. Stonegrave with eagle eye for “Central Vermont” end of it, rough and ready Harry Badgeley of “Great Western,” Bill Askin or handsome Billy McLean of the Beatty Line. They talked corn until their tones grew husky and they were as fine a coterie of unconventional free lances as ever probed the intricacies of a railroad timetable. To this day the boys tell of the adaptability of Harry Badgeley of the “C.G.W.R.,” how he studied pigology, hob-nobbing for three days with a colony of ruralists whom he landed high and dry by this artful manoeuvre in spite of keen competition. That was the halcyon era, the palmy days of Ed. Sullivan, Ed. Riley, Ed. Clancy and Ned Hanlan.

Frank E. Harrison, who is now agent of C.P.R., at Whitby, Ont., will remember all this as he was about this time Canadian Agent first for the C.B. & Q.R., and afterwards the C.St.P. & K.C.R.

On “special” party dates passengers were concentrated at junctional points and afterwards personally conducted to Detroit, Chicago or St. Paul. Mr. B. Travers, city ticket agent at Paris, still, has informed me that parties of 75 and 100 people were occasionally gathered there, and such a pretentious exodus was known to earn a serenade by the local brass band at the time of departure. The sturdy knights of ploughshares and other instruments of peace had to be and were better mixers than the stall-fed variety of traveller of this day, and the consciousness that theirs was a common object made easy the upsetting of social barriers to the music of violin, mouth-organ and jew’s harp. The journey always ensured incident and good-fellowship, and perhaps, some disappointing experiences. The records, considerately offered me for perusal, do not include the name of the escorting agent who, while wrapped in the arms of Morpheus in a Chicago hotel, suffered the loss of his train’s entire proceeds by the deft removal of a panel in the door on which his coat was hanging. It was when escorting a party westward that Will Wyley, with “M.C.R.,” suffocated, and M. Boesmburgh had a very close call in the burning of the hotel “Newhall” at Milwaukee.

Three different gauges, or widths between rails, were accepted as standard in different parts of Canada and United States at that time, and to permit interchange of equipment, three rails were sometimes laid. Just before the adoption of the standard, broad gauge, 4 feet, 8½ inches, became general in America, a good-sized party bound for the west were delayed at Toronto half a day awaiting the readjustment of that portion of the “Great Western” to38 Hamilton, Ont. In the forenoon one rail over the entire distance, 39 odd miles, was moved in and spiked down in its new position. This must have been quite a feat 35 years ago in the absence of those simplifying methods practiced to-day. John Weatherston, father of Nicholas and Robert of the same name, supervised the work.

Moving westward over designated routes from Chicago, the canary-colored coaches were pulled by locomotives with yellow bellied boilers, wheels painted scarlet and ponderous smokestacks—hummers in the old days—but antiques in 1918. They bore such names as Antelope, Reindeer, Thistle, &c., as well as of prominent people.

BOIL THEM WHEN THEY’RE TOUGH

Picking her way daintily through the grime of the locomotive works, a young woman visitor viewed the huge operations with visible awe. Turning to a young man from the office who was shewing her through and pointing, she asked, “What is that big thing over there?”

“That’s a locomotive boiler”, said the guide.

She puckered her brows.

“And what do they boil locomotives for?” she enquired.

“To make the locomotive tender”, said the young man from the office, with amazing effrontery.

Young’s Magazine

What a shock it would be to My Lady’s complacency if, on her journey now, she should find it necessary to raise a sunshade in the coach to protect her raiment from the rain and snow sifting through the chinks and rifts in the car. This age is not without some blessings, as Ben Fletcher might have exclaimed. We are reminded here of a characteristic of Mr. Fletcher, who was advance agent for “D.G.H. & M.” He had been working up business for an excursion to Nebraska, which did not “pan out,” one solitary passenger offering his patronage. The selling agent wired him for instructions and received reply couched thusly: “By the great horned toad Reginald, chain him to the seat!”

The “St. P.M. & M.,” at birth “St. Paul & Pacific,” later converted by astute minds into the “Great Northern Railway,” was the railroad which gave that big quartette, Messrs. Angus, Smith, Hill and Stephens, a gilt-edged monopoly of Manitoba emigration and, incidentally, the patronage of dame fortune. Men and chattels had only shank’s mare as an alternative to this line northward from St. Paul as far as Fisher’s Landing, a Red River port. Here, transfer was made to the Kittson Line of steamboats plying to Fort Garry now Winnipeg, and owned by Norman Kittson, a colleague of J. J. Hill in some early business ventures. In winter the trip was made by stage travelling part way over thick ice. Mr. Kittson was one of several successors to Anson Northrup, the pioneer navigator of the Upper Mississippi River who launched his first craft there in 1835.

The Great Northern Railway, during the time of the Manitoba boom, and since, was championed in Canada by “live wires” such as Jack Huckins,39 resourceful Ham McMicken, who is acting for the road in Europe at present, Messrs. Kinsley, Graves, Wurtele, Watkins, Hetherington, Tudor and Brooks.

James M. Taylor, in charge of affairs for “C.M. & St. P.R.,” during those strenuous days, pulled off the biggest coup of the period I attempt to sketch, in securing for his line a party which originated at Millbrook, Ont., and is said to have consisted of or influenced 500 people together with 55 carloads of effects. Mr. A. Leach, who was ticket agent there then, capably fills that position to-day.

The idea which the “President’s Agreement” made concrete in February, 1900, was ridiculed twenty years before and the system of commissions to agents for ticket sales being in vogue, competition waxed lively. For obvious reasons the standards of remuneration did not always remain stationary; fancy prices and fat drafts swelled many a bank balance.

Although few dismissals and re-engagements by telegraph were bulletined, the foreign railway man’s berth never was considered as sure as taxes. For brief periods in those stirring times, the commission paid to agents for each ticket reading from a point in Eastern Canada to the Pacific Seaboard netted $11.00 to $15.00. Inside information about methods and means, dormant in the book shelves of many an agent’s memory, would have made interesting anecdotes had one gained the favor of men like Tom Ford, T.P.A., G.T.R., W. J. Grant, for a time with “Mobile & Ohio” in Canada, Geo. W. Hibbard, former A.G.P.A., C.P.R., Montreal, unfortunate Alex Drysdale, who lost his sight and was pensioned by the Chicago & Alton Railroad, and the erudite M. B. “Garfield” Tooker, the Beau Brummel of many a husting. Heard you ever of Mr. Tooker’s perceptive olefactory membrane? How he accurately distinguished, though blindfolded, the odor of a dozen different perfumes in J. Livingstone’s store in Listowel. Then behold, the unkindest cut of all: some mischievous scamp thrust an uncorked bottle of skunk oil beneath his nose.

Another scout, robust and in commercial life at Hamilton to-day, who links the past and present, is D. O. Pease years ago with the Great Western Railway. Dan Pease is the proud possessor of the long delayed Fenian Raid medal, and when William Edgar appointed him D.P.A., G.T.R., Montreal, he evinced during twelve years in that capacity, an enthusiastic interest in military matters and movement of troops. Conversant with shipping and the French language, shrewd and sauve, he successively represented the C.M. & St. P.R. for several years in Quebec in the early days, and relates an incident about a ticket agent in Prince Edward Island who booked a party of twenty round trips to California and out of the bountiful commissions purchased for his wife a fine horse, harness and basket buggy.

Canadian Ticket Agents’ Association

Representative group of officers and members present at Annual Meeting, Buffalo, October, 1909.

Pictured beside C. & N.W.R. Terminal, Chicago

H. G. Thorley, Ontario Passenger Agent, White Star Line, Toronto; C. R. Morgan, Ticket Clerk, C.T.A., G.T.R., Hamilton, Overseas; F. W. Churchill, City Passenger Agent, C.P.R., Collingwood; A. Philips, City Passenger Agent, G.T.R., Huntington, P.Q., now M.L.A.; T. L. Thomson, C.T.A., C. & P.E.I.R., Charlottetown, P.E.I.; Dr. J. W. Shaw, Honorary Physician, Clinton, now overseas; Will Lahey, C.P.A., C.P.R., Brantford; W. Ward, C.T.A., G.T.R., Dresden, Ont.; H. J. Moorehouse, C.P.A., C.P.R., Sault Ste. Marie; H. M. Bohreer, D.P.A., “M. & O.,” Chicago; Arthur Hare, C.P.A. “Wabash,” Tillsonburg; M. McNamara, C.T.A., G.T.R., Walkerton, Collector Customs; W. McIlroy, C.P.A., C.P.R., Peterborough; E. de la Hooke, C.P.A., G.T.R., London, Ont., Secretary-Treasurer; J. P. Hanley, C.P.A., G.T.R., Kingston, Vice-President; R. J. Craig, C.P.A., C.P.R., Cobourg, President; W. Jackson, C.P.A., C.P.R., Clinton; W. Bunton, C.P.A., G.T.R., Peterborough; C. E. Morgan, C.P.A., G.T.R., Hamilton; R. L. Mortimer, C.P.A., G.T.R., Shelburne; Geo. B. Wyllie, T.P.A., Illinois Central Railway, Buffalo, N.Y.

There are quite a number of agents, active in transportation matters at the present time, who took part in and recall the friendly but whirlwind competition “American” lines indulged in to obtain the lion’s share of business moving beyond the border. Forty years rest lightly indeed, on them all and a baker’s dozen chosen at random might well include Edward de la Hooke, London, dean of the faculty, erect, vigorous and immaculate, who began railroading in Hamilton in 1864, W. G. Webster, a colt yet and an inveterate wag,41 who resides in Chicago, J. A. McKenzie, Woodstock, Will Jackson, Clinton W. Somerville, Seaforth, James Dore, Mitchell, R. Lauder, Goderich, C. L. King, Kincardine, John Towner, Stratford, P. Robertson and R. E. Waugh, Hamilton, Dick Shea, Palmerston, W. E. Rispin, Chatham, Dan. Hayes, London, Geo. McCallum, Galt, a storehouse of ancient history; C. E. Horning, Toronto, Tom Evans, London, John Paul, Dave Dover and Alex. Calder, Winnipeg, W. H. King, St. Thomas, J. Quinlan, Montreal, W. H. Clancy, now living in Toronto, (a wit with an “Emerald” flavor), A. E. Lalande, Montreal, J. B. Lambkin, Halifax, D. Carruthers, Quebec, John Lyons, Moncton, and J. M. Riddell, Portland. The names U. E. Thompson, Belleville, John Foy, Toronto, A. H. Taylor, Ottawa, C. E. Morgan, Hamilton, J. Tierney, Arnprior, W. Bunton, Peterborough, W. H. Harper, Chatham, Alex. Notman, Toronto, Joseph Heffernan, Guelph, Louis Drago, Niagara Falls and John Gray live in the memory although they have ceased their labors.

Among such as these was and is business and co-operation sought by that original and persistent advertiser, W. R. Callaway, once station master at Walkerton, now G.P.A., Soo Line; S. H. Palmer, C.P.A., M.C.R.; Harry W. Steinhoff, Geo. H. Anthony, Varnie Russell, R. G. McCraw of W.C.R. (the Soo’s new arm), D. W. Hatch, connected with A.T. & S.F.R.; C. Hartigan, Rutland Railway, and that big four who so well attended to Northern Pacific Railway affairs, Messrs. Walter E. Belcher, W. G. Mason, George Dew, Thomas Henry, and their collaborators, Geo. W. Hardisty, Geo. McCaskey and Geo. Barnes. Guided by Armand Lalonde, the “B. & M.” scored often. They could tell you of long drives in good and indifferent weather into the surrounding country seeking prospective passengers and good locations for the half and quarter sheet style of advertising so much used then; of hard and fast arrangements upset in a thrice accompanied by restitution of deposits given to clinch the deal and of mysterious cheques which seemed to spring from nowhere in particular when the management forbade their acceptance. They smile when recounting methods used to test if agents were sticking to tariff. I remember the case of one stool pigeon who, after obtaining the favor of a ticket at a rate partially unconfirmed, selling it with intent to a rival organization to be utilized in trapping the enemy. He made a required affidavit as to purchase price and the subterfuge, with its charge of irregularity hingeing thereon, had not been operative an hour before the resourceful agent who sold him the ticket, effectively turned the tables causing the spotter’s arrest on the grounds “false pretences,” and that worthy received his liberty under suspended sentence together with a reprimand.

While these diversified events were finding a niche in history, M. V. McGinnis and Major E. M. Peel, a lover of horseflesh, were on the war path for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and their contemporary, W. T. Dockrill, present T.P.A., C.P.R., was a “big issue” in another direction. A busy man with a portable railroad in his “carpet-bag” ticket case, he created quite a furore years ago in the vicinity of Brockville. From November, 1883 to June 1885 he traveled on the “C.P.R.” trains between that city, Ottawa and Smiths Falls exchanging prepaid orders and ticketing westbound business. In July,42 1885, the C.P.R. was completed to a point beyond Jackfish and from track-end there, the heroes of the Battle of Batoche marched across the arm of Lake Superior before the bridge linking up the western extension was erected. During the time the different contracts were completing, the builders released at intervals, 10,000 laborers and navvies in lots of fifty, one hundred and two hundred, who traveled via Carleton Junction to Brockville on orders issued by the agents appointed after each station had been established behind the scene of operations. These exchange orders were seldom fully routed and Mr. Dockrill thus controlled heavy business which he, in competition with G.T.R., directed round the horn via ferry and Morristown, N.Y., thence Utica & Black River Railway, an abbreviated but prolific “feeder” to “Canada Southern” through St. Thomas and “L.S. & M.S.” by the way of Buffalo.

William T. Dockrill,

Traveling Passenger Agent, Canadian Pacific Railway.

In 1881 rumors of consolidation of existing railway systems in Ontario were bruited about by those “in the know” and the steady, westward extension of the “C.P.R.” sowed uneasiness where the interests via “Chicago-St. Paul Route” were cherished. August 11th and 12th, 1882, witnessed the amalgamation of “Great Western” and “Grand Trunk.” William Edgar then was “G.P.A.” at Hamilton and Mr. Geo. T. Bell, present Passenger Traffic Manager, Grand Trunk Railway System, made stenographic hooks and crooks for him.

November 2nd, 1885, marked an epoch in the annals of the prairie provinces. Although previously used for transportation of troops, it was the date when Canadian Pacific Railway equipment first rolled into Winnipeg under a schedule. The event was fraught with much import to Manitoba and forged an item of significance in the history of the Dominion. The national character of Van Horne’s project and the prestige of the sponsors of this great pioneer, western Canadian line attracted to it the major portion of freight traffic which had been moving via other channels, and by demanding the privilege of preferential passenger rates, based on newness, geographical position and inaccessibility, the patronage of the “Homeseeker” was diverted, practically en masse, from United States lines which had enjoyed the pickings unmolested for eight years. This reversal of conditions left not even all the “Dakota” business to the latter, and with a single exception, the Chicago-St. Paul and allied systems, one by one, abolished Canadian agencies and withdrew their representatives from active participation in the chase.

Then it was that General Passenger Agents Carpenter, Charlton, St. John, Stennett and Barnes, in the seats of the mighty at Chicago and St. Paul, felt a temporary modification of interest in Canadian passenger affairs. Geo. Barnes afterwards resigned from the Northern Pacific Ry, entering commercial life as a piano manufacturer, and, I believe, made a fortune.

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S. H. Palmer,

District Passenger Agent, Mich. Cent. Railway, St. Thomas, Civil War Veteran. Formerly connected with “Atlantic & Great Western,” “Erie & Pittsburg,” “Canada Southern.”

These changes, however, did not impair the business relations then budding between “U.S.” merchants and Canadian importers, and the railroads of the neighboring republic realized that it behooved them to look jealously after their individual share of lumber, broom corn and cotton goods from the Southwest, seeds, citrus and deciduous fruits from California, tinned salmon and shingles from the North Pacific Coast and consignments of matting, silks, bamboo, rice, etc., disembarked along Puget Sound.

The man in the street might puzzle over the price of his breakfast orange if he reflected that some days 20 carloads of this marmalade fruit now and then gluts the local markets at Montreal and Toronto.

A certain percentage of such incoming cars, after unloading, are returned laden with hides to Milwaukee’s greatest tannery, clay, cordage, fish, lumber and sand; pedigreed sheep for Idaho and Oregon ranchmen, hair for San Francisco plasterers, gums, glass, nuts, salt, and tinplate from Atlantic Coast wharves; also with ton upon ton of coveted Canadian woodpulp which reappears as the basis for newspaper headlines.

Historians of railroad progress chronicled continued extension until the ramifications of the “G.T.R.” and subsidiary properties, gradually gridironed the Province of Ontario with a network of branches, despite obstacles, not always anticipated. A most deplorable happening, and severe financial setback, was the accident which occurred on February 27th, 1889. In the evening of that date “G.T.R.” eastbound express, No. 55, en route Hamilton in charge of conductor Dan Revells, crashed through a bridge at St. George, snuffing out the lives and injuring more than two score passengers. Mr. J. A. Richardson, widely known as Canadian Passenger Agent, Wabash Railroad, and a veteran business getter, had, under pressure on the part of friends, left his train at London. The seat he vacated there was taken by William Wemp, Immigration Agent of “C.M. & St. P.R.” Poor Wemp was numbered among the killed. This proved to be the worst Canadian railroad disaster since March 12th, 1857, when sixty people died in the Des Jardins Canal wreck.

From 1891 to 1898 seven lean years spread stagnation and hard times abroad in the land, discouraging operations of “U.S.” corporations in Canada, but 1900 beheld a restored confidence pulsating the arteries of trade. British Columbia felt the stimulus, the optimistic Northwest clamored for improved transportation facilities, while J. J. Hill surveyed from afar the possibilities in duplicating portions, at least, of “C.P.R.” Later, his policy got the wedge’s thin end into “Kootenai” and Vancouver, which quickly resulted in heavier tonnage prospects from Ontario and Quebec for his trains. Canadian Northern Railway activity in Manitoba followed by the deal that province’s government entered into with President Mellen of Northern Pacific Railway, threw open44 a previously restricted area giving United States lines to the south larger opportunities and scope, which compelled their attention once more.

The complexion of things had undergone a change in twenty-five years and the traffic the returning “American” railroads now seek and appreciate comprises not only settler’s outfit and pressing needs, but everything from a car of seaweed to a circus train and the variety runs the gamut of raw and manufactured products. Your westerner unconsciously imbibes large ideas with the unpolluted ozone of the boundless prairies. He courts sleep in a metal bed from Ontario, bathes in a porcelain-lined tub and eats well. If he has them, he freely parts with his ducats for carloads of biscuits, butter, bacon and eggs; cheese, flour, canned vegetables, condensed milk, syrups, marmalades and sweets which come from the east. Recently a train of cars containing John Barleycorn’s headache provoker flaunted boldly across the horizon heading due west to the opulent personage who imports his pianos and autos in big lots regularly. Mark you, more than 200 carloads of “Niagara” grown grapes, peaches and mixed fruit roll out to the blooming prairie every season over bridge and ferry and into the tunnel’s insatiable maw at Sarnia.

The substantial growth of Winnipeg, Portage la Prairie, Brandon, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton and Pacific Coast cities, and the mushroom proclivities of many a lesser burg, has given a marked impetus to the spirit of competition in manufacturing and railway circles. In the face of an exaggerated propaganda about bounding difficulties, and the like, and a strong but diminishing pro-Canadian sentiment, the men behind the gun annually dispatch and receive by way of Rouse’s Point, Suspension Bridge, Port Huron, The Sault, etc., merchandise worth thousands of dollars which our cousins eagerly solicit, working for the haul in conjunction with Canadian railway lines. Eight hundred carloads a year would be, according to some men’s estimate, a modest shewing, but, after all, conditions considered, it is a tidy, “found” business in and out of Canada for an individual “U.S.” line to secure or relinquish. I have known a single railroad’s catch in Ontario to exceed, on several occasions, three hundred carloads a month, 95 per cent. of this tonnage going to Manitoba and British Columbia destinations, the fresh fruit receiving exceptional attention and other commodities making scheduled runs to Winnipeg well within five days, and to Vancouver in twelve days’ time. It is estimated that via the various avenues between the two nations, from Coast to Coast, two carloads of freight a minute pass into the republic to the south as a result of the crusade of its railroad corporations.

In more than one tight pinch “U.S.” railways have come to the fore, furnishing an expeditious alternative when shipper and consignee have been stewing over congested yards, crippled motive power, notorious scarcity of cars, strike and snow disadvantages which trouble every line sooner or later and which are not unknown to the men piloting the Canadian railway interests to success.

Twenty-two foreign railroads, nine operating in the east and central States, and thirteen western companies, each maintain one to six passenger and commercial offices in this country. Affairs pertaining thereto are supervised by45 Canadian Agents, Division, General and Travelling Agents, Contracting Representatives, Solicitors, City Canvassers and Counter Clerks. The combined staff numbers 100 men. With few exceptions, they are natives of the soil; familiar with local conditions, and are liberal dispensers of a good deal of salary, rentals, incidental expense monies and sunshine. AIn rounding up traffic the tactics which obtain include direct solicitation with shipper, consignee and traveller; the assiduous cultivation of the man who pays the freight or buys the tickets, and canvass of stationary railway agents, whose judgment often dictates via what junctions and lines unrouted shipments, and passengers without pre-arranged itinerary, should be routed. Prompt dispatch and trains “on time” are cardinal requisites in luring trade and holding a continuance of favor. The personality and perseverance of the foreign road agent has an important bearing on results. Changeable climatic conditions divert certain commodities and influence the warm zone hunter from one channel to another. Warehouse and track facilities play a part in the scheme of convenience, and that indefinite quantity, sentiment, colors calculations, though shifty as smoke. Unsettled claims occasionally rile the temper and switch a lot of business to the lynx-eyed competitor who watches while he works. Friendly, but contending factions, lock horns for the haul of a single carload. San Francisco and Vancouver agents, acting in concert with their confreres at Winnipeg, Halifax or Hamilton, keep the wires sizzling. Perhaps, some of the “big wigs” put a finger in the pie, and to score a point, resort to every permissable ruse save, let us hope, that dishonorable weapon, the bogus telegram.

Necessity has slowly convinced numerous hesitating shippers and travellers that the canvass of those United States railroads, looking to Canada for business, has more behind it than a cloven hoof; that sometimes an extra string to one’s bow is a really effective precautionary measure.

The pack animal, oxen and primitive implements of the pioneer who pierced the wilderness and first scratched the surface of the last west, have steadily given place to the steel ribboned highway and thus, on “easy street” when compared with his progenitor, the modern colonizer is linking the old with the new and accomplishing, by successive stages, the development of our pregnant western heritage.

Nowadays, discriminating tourists, individually or in parties, the banker speculator, merchant prince in his own car, and commercial man having business in Europe, at the Pacific Coast or in Manitoba, more and more frequently requests that the New York or Chicago gateway should figure in their itinerary to permit enjoyment of the unsurpassed service and scenic environment of those routes which justly deserve the public’s endorsement.

Trade relations between United States and Canadian railroads systems constantly grow more intimate and wield an unmistakable influence in the strengthening of those bonds, commercial and sentimental, which make for the good of all concerned. This interchange broadens our knowledge of each other and tends to more completely harmonize the aims and aspirations of the two nations.

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  1. B. H. Bennett, General Agent, C. & N.W.R., Toronto, Ont.

  2. E. T. Boland, Manager, Robert Reford Co., Toronto.

  3. R. Creelman, General Passenger Agent, Canadian Northern Railway, Winnipeg, Man.

  4. Geo. Collins, Superintendent, C.N.R., Trenton, Ont. Ex-General Manager, Central Ont. R’y.

  5. A. D. Huff, Traffic Manager, Canadian Export Paper Co., Montreal, former D.F.A., G.T.R., Ottawa.

  6. L. Macdonald, Division Freight Agent, Grand Trunk Railway, Toronto, Ont.

  7. M. McGregor, General Canadian Freight Agent, Erie Railroad, Toronto, Canada.

  8. C. E. McPherson, Ass’t Pass’r Traffic Manager, Canadian Pacific Railway, Winnipeg, Man.

  9. P. G. Mooney, Assistant General Freight Agent, Canadian Northern Railway, Toronto.

10. H. P. Sharpe, General Agent, Dominion Express Company, Toronto.

11. H. G. Thorley, Passenger Agent for Ontario, White Star—Dominion Line, Toronto.

Joseph S. Draper,

The G.T.R.—G.W.R. Conductor, on whose trains “Tommy” Edison was newsboy and juvenile publisher. Conductor Draper ran through London for 44 years.

Napoleon Bonaparte on isolated St. Helena, when rebelliously pacing beside his titled and devoted aide one gloomy day exclaimed “Montholon! Montholon! the world has produced but three great generals—Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar and myself.” What monumental self esteem. Strategist and tacticial genius though he proved himself, such plannings and ambition at that period meant the circumvention and bloody ruin of his fellow men and their household gods. Introducing here the Little Corporal’s egoism, the chaotic condition of the times and his campaigns of destruction serve to emphasize the wonderfully constructive and scientific achievements so quietly evolved for man’s benefit by the brain of another but unwarlike genius, Thomas Alva Edison. Until Armageddon, his has been a peaceful era with ploughshares replacing swords and commerce expanding unmolested.

To the Land of Evangeline, his Netherlands forebears are said to have treked with the United Empire Loyalists in Revolutionary times. A generation later they left Nova Scotia and settled in that part of the Province of Ontario now registered as the County of Norfolk. Near the little town of Vienna, close to Lake Erie’s shore, where I believe relatives still reside, Thomas Edison’s elder brothers were born, but not until after 1837, when Robert Edison transferred his family to Milan, Ohio, twelve miles from Lake Erie, did the lad Thomas and his sister first behold the sunshine, the birth of the former occurring February, 1847.

Evidently his elementary education began in that state, but the fact that his brother Pitt Edison, managed a street railway at Port Huron, Michigan, probably accounts for the lad’s presence thereabouts and furnished an incentive to his precocious, nomadic predilections. Joseph Draper from the County of Tipperary, ninety-year-old veteran, living in Toronto, recently deceased,48 who was in 1855 a giant conductor with the Ontario, Simcoe & Huron Railroad, (Northern Railway), told me he remembered well how young Thomas Edison later on sold newspapers between Detroit and Port Huron, on his trains running through to Sarnia and London. He declared that the embryo merchant was an active, well behaved and likeable stripling who, even during the chrysalis stage, nourished a specific bent by carrying with him a portable telegraph key. During the weary months of the Civil War, 1862–3, he obtained in Detroit a printing press, old type, with accessories and learning the contents of war bulletins, etc., from station to station, set up and printed the news and jokes which he sold along the line under the caption “Grand Trunk Herald.”

Conductor Draper said he was often compelled to reprimand the boy for tinkering with chemicals and for his untidiness with bottles in that corner of the baggage car where he kept his stock of magazines and candy. He intimated also that about this time the young experimentor risked his life in saving the child of the Grand Trunk Railway Agent at Mount Clemens, Michigan, from an onrushing train and the grateful father taught him telegraphing.

Living in an atmosphere of daily contact with keys and sounders, he took to “jerking lightning” like a sailor to the sea, soon becoming proficient.

In 1867 he worked on the wire, covering the “night trick” at Stratford, Ont., and was also at Park Hill, where the late George B. Reeve, of Grand Trunk—Southern Pacific prominence, picked up operating. In the autumn of 1913 when the Stratford, Ont., yard limits were extended and reorganized to conform to the requirements of the new “Grand Trunk” station, opened in December of that year, the old eastend ducat, (dovecote-do’ecot), in which young Edison is said to have served a part of his apprenticeship as an operator, was torn down to make way for a modern signal tower.

Every railroad telegrapher is said to experience once, sooner or later during his career, being temporarily petrified with alarm on finding he has ordered two trains to pass “head on” or from the rear on a single track. Railroad rumor only is my authority for repeating a report that young Edison figured in such a collision on paper. The publication “Railways and Other Ways” quotes an interview given by Mr. Edison at London, Canada, many years ago in which the great inventor referred to his oversight when a youth at Stratford in overlooking the delivery to conductor of a train order the result of which permitted two trains to approach on a single track. Fortunately the line between Stratford and St. Marys Junction was straight and an accident may have been averted by quick thinking and rapid action.

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In many guises I have heard repeated the story of his original device for answering his dispatcher’s call though wrapped in the arms of Morpheus for forty pilfered winks. He was working in Western Ontario and the rule declared that each operator should keep in touch with the dispatcher every hour while on duty, write “6” and sign their telegraphic signature of a letter or two. This meant the next thing to eternal vigilance during the quiet, lonesome hours of the night. It would appear Edison attached an extra wheel to the mechanism of the office clock, governing it by an independent spring. Around the rim of this wheel he cut dots and dashes spelling the stereotyped message and his code “Sig.”, arranging the wheel’s position so that it made one revolution each hour at the time agents usually flashed “All well.” From the clock pinions a series of wire coils connected with a weak solution jar battery, were rigged and thence passing over the telegraph key joined the charged main wires leading therefrom. When the clock struck each hour the supplementary wheel sent the necessary intermittent ticks along the temporary mediums and were in turn transmitted via the trunk wires to headquarters. The version given me by another “oldest inhabitant” would indicate that he had the night watchman trained to turn the wheel hourly by hand. With such ingenuity did the budding inventor abbreviate his nocturnal vigils and conductors Mammoth Johnston and silk hat Dick Thorpe never knew the difference as they whizzed past into the encircling gloom. This anecdote bears the hall mark of a measure of probability and has been vouched for by some of Edison’s contemporaries, but the yarn that he once affixed to the telegraphic office door a contrivance that made it collide with the nasal organ of a spying superintendent is likely spurious. When working at Fort Gratiot he introduced without fuss or feathers, an improvement in relaying messages across the River at Sarnia which reduced the labor involved by half, evincing in this test an early aversion to ponderous method and high costs, which has characterized his subsequent experiments and helpful discoveries.

In his commercial wire practice at Detroit his colleagues of other days remember him as a good press reporter whose handwriting resembled printing more than a string of Spencerian script. They tell how he tied the Gotham wiseacres and would be jokers into knots with his deliberateness and speed, the key and its characters being a part of him, like a Centaur and his horse. His demeanor was at times friendly and discursive, followed by spells of dreamy reflection and profound reticence and he would frequently immerse himself in tinkerings with the sounder and key, adding to and endeavoring to make them different and more amenable to his advanced ideas. The reel with a paper ribbon on which a message from the other end was registered by means of dots and dashes indented thereon, had not then been entirely replaced by the sound system.

On February 24th, 1868, Mr. Edison arrived in Toronto en route Boston, and after a brief visit with his former friend John Murray, a well known dispatcher, afterwards some years at Belleville, started eastward. On this date a traffic paralyzing three day storm set in and the “G.T.R.” train was snow50 stalled, compelling Mr. Edison and several others to return. Expecting improved weather and resumption of train service, he spent considerable time about the old depot and men who met him then state that he was a desultory talker, an inveterate thinker and a chain smoker quite oblivious to the fleeting hours of the night. The late James Stephenson was superintendent at Toronto that winter, Henry Bourlier so long and honorably connected with the Allans, was station agent, W. A. Wilson, erect and active to-day, just recently retired from the “New York Central,” was the Morse Code operator, W. C. Nunn—inventor of a railway signal device in 1856—was agent at Belville and “the admiral,” Mr. Frederick J. Glackmeyer, Ontario Parliamentary Sergeant-at-Arms, December 27th, 1867 (50 years) 1917, had only two months before bid adieu to ticket work in the old station where Thomas Edison purchased his ticket.

On February 27th, he again essayed the sixteen hour journey to Montreal, and at Boston in 1870 the Duplex System appeared, enabling two operators to send independent messages over a single wire. Then came his perfection of the Quadruplex, permitting two people at each end to forward and receive telegrams simultaneously.

His astounding creative mentality seemed to give birth to successive world wonders as regularly as the birds nest in springtime and more or less familiar brain children include the telegraphic button repeater, stock-tickers, an electric pencil with motor for duplicating, the phonograph and waxen records, dictaphone and revolutionizing incandescent light, then the mechanism for taking moving pictures. To-day the speaking cinematographic pictures or kinetophone, steps confidently out of the laboratories at Orange, N.J., to mystify yet convince the incredulous and expectant populace.

Some years ago his friend John Murray paid his respects at New York and was well received by his former acquaintance. Requesting permission to inspect the interior economy of the “Western Union” telegraph office, Mr. Edison introduced him by letter to the proper person asking that every attention be shown him and adding “When Mr. Murray was an operator on the ‘G.T.R.,’ I was a news vendor.”

Thus does this unusual man round out a useful career, his balance an object lesson to conceited prigs and his wizard-like achievements an incentive to rising generations.

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STARS IN THE CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY FIRMAMENT

Sir George Bury, Vice-President; E. W. Beatty, K.C., Vice-President and General Counsel; R. Marpole, General Exec. Assistant, British Columbia; C. E. E. Ussher, Passenger Traffic Manager; W. R. MacInnes, Vice-President; W. Maughan, Assistant General Passenger Agent, Montreal; M. H. Brown, Division Freight Agent, O. D., Toronto; C. B. Foster, Assistant Passenger Traffic Manager, Montreal; Geo. McL. Brown, European Manager; J. T. Arundel, General Superintendent, O. D., Toronto.

To have one’s activities in office or household likened to the alertness and foresight of the bee is equivalent to a pronounced compliment. From time immemorial the beehive has ever been regarded by the peoples of Occident and Orient as the storehouse and base of the busiest little folks in the animal kingdom—as the distinctive emblem of concentrated industry, where laggards do not abound.

In Windsor Street, opposite the fine cathedral of St. Peter, Montreal, Quebec, stands a spacious stone castle, the handsome, towering Canadian Pacific Railway hive, and verily, it is alive with endeavor and swarms with the spirit of enterprise. Inhabited chiefly by king bees—and a few queens—this host of 2000 flaunt no iron crosses for inefficiency and here drones have no place.

From the pinnacle position in the steeple, ably filled by a shrewd, democratic nobleman, down the scale through a labyrinth of departments to the youngster affixing postage and dreaming of the Vice-Presidency, every official and employee in that busy headquarters of the greatest transportation corporation within the world’s ken, plays his part in the drama “making hay while the sun shines.” Feeling that they are an integral part of a gigantic organization, they play tick, tack, toe with $153,000,000 in rolling stock and participate with sincerity in the annual round-up of 30,000,000 tons of freight that require 95,000 cars of divers shapes to transport, in addition to moving 16,000,000 passengers for $30,000,000 necessitating a string of equipment that would reach forty miles from Toronto to Hamilton. 2255 locomotives pull this traffic. When all hands and the cooks on the dining cars are intensely occupied in harvesting the golden honey, then is the management in clover.

Concealed in the brains of this directorate of specialists, or tableted in the company’s archives and records, repose secrets pertaining to matters, methods and men, of crowned heads, governments and undercurrents of commerce, finance and future intention which, if given publicity, would make the listener gasp in wonderment and likewise aid him to roll in riches.

Apart from an extensive, intermediate network, (totaling 15,000 miles) her unbroken chains of trains span an additional 3,600 miles of continent from the cod banks of the Atlantic to the salmon spawning beds along the Pacific Ocean, dovetailing there with some of the splendid units of a fleet of a hundred vessels valued to-day at $65,000,000, which circumvent the seven seas carrying “Canadian Pacific” prestige, influence, secret service and international communications between all races and temperatures. There are no fields of production in any clime on the planet known to civilized man that this dynamo of energy, trade and travel has not investigated and if, through development or encouragement, a modicum of reciprocal traffic is extracted or the sweets of industrial success can be promised, rest assured that exploring bees will return to the hive with documentary proof or Marconigrams, cable and mails will herald most recent results.

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It is a marvelous modern reality, smacking of the magic of Bagdad caliph eras, that the Windsor Street cabinet of individually expert cosmopolitans, with their teeming clusters of resourceful understudies, command a metaphorical view of the surface of all hemispheres, like a submersible’s captain seated beside the disk of camera obscura scanning the ocean’s bosom. It is, however, only with the searchlights of peace, of barter and trade and commercial expansion, which spell security and comfort for mankind, that the “C.P.R.” sweeps the horizons, feels the universe’s pulse and keeps in touch through the medium of the electric spark, with the aspirations of the world’s brown, yellow and Caucasian children. She underestimates no detail and quietly assumes any legitimate task of magnitude, transferring one unaccompanied child or 100,000 Orientals by sea and land from non-essential avocations in this place or that to other environment and back again without mishap, fuss or feathers.

Composed of forty-five acquired, leased or controlled railways, this immense, corporate body, holding the keys of access to almost any domain and caucus of the sons of Babel, this syndicate that has the entree to exclusive circles and “inside information,” that is rich in agricultural lands and demonstration farms, in timber and tie reserves, rich in gas rights and petroleum areas, that controls coal collieries, smelters and hotels and banks much specie of the realm, has a soul.

In her scattered, flourishing family many are called but few are chosen to attain the exalted places, which are easily memorized. If her sway is uncongenial or her pay seems not enough, you may withdraw and the ranks close up, but for those who remain—and they are 80,000—she offers standards of remuneration far from the foot of the column. Her pensions department, with a fund of $900,000 and a yearly contribution of $500,000 to the reserve, even now protecting 850 former employees, is generous, and I could cite you instances where employees resuming duty partly convalescent, have been relieved indefinitely for recovery, under salary. Several others, permanently incapacitated, have reason to be grateful to the Canadian Pacific Railway for gratuitous aid and acts of thoughtfulness seldom attributed to big interests.

Official Ottawa, Washington and the Court of St. James do not think it judicious to lay bare for public perusal at present, what the Canadian Pacific Railway Company may or may not have accomplished in the realm of finance and loans, apropos the great international struggle of humanity and democracy.

The fruitfulness of the mission of a transportation company with $1,038,074,983.26 of assets, with a property investment of $538,510,563.24 and annual gross earnings of $152,389,334.95 must be well-nigh incalculable, especially to a democratic country—to the last great west, with so vast an area and promising though veiled future. The Canadian Pacific Railway is heavy with import and deeply interlaced with the potentialities of our own Canada.

W. B. Lanigan,

Freight Traffic Manager, Canadian Pacific Railway, Montreal, Que.

An Irishman taking home a large goose after a raffle, stopped at a hillside inn in Wicklow to procure refreshment. Laying down the prize he proceeded to satisfy his thirst when a suspicious looking individual seized the fowl and made off with it. Pat at once gave chase and grasping the runaway by the neck exclaimed, “What did you take the bird fore” “Sure!” said the thief, “an’ I took it for a lark”. “Did ye”, said Pat, “begorra then, you’d make a poor judge at a bird show”.

And by the same token, the man or maid who would take W. B. Lanigan for an uncivil, disgruntled misanthrope, who could not enjoy a lark, would be a decidedly poor judge of human nature. He has rubbed shoulders with good and ill fortune, has contended for thirty-three years with almost every variety of railroading obstacle, hewing his way to comparatively smooth sailing under the “C.P.R.” flag and the ordeal has not impaired his optimistic outlook, but finds him to-day a sociable, approachable and happy dispositioned man of affairs.

Do not infer from this tribute, however, that the gentleman cannot look after himself, does not jealously protect his Company’s best interests and is incapable of administering a merited rebuke, or even a scorching blast, because he can. An old admirer and personal friend described him to me as a hot-headed Irishman of fine parts with whom he had had many a good natured wrangle in his attempts to circumvent the railway’s rates and regulations.

In Three Rivers, Quebec, October 12th, 1861, William B. Lanigan was born and in due time was educated at St. Josephs College of that city and at Stanstead University in Old Quebec. Sharbot Lake Junction is a quiet place and no doubt, was a lonesome spot that night in September, 1884, when he first put his hand to a man’s task as night operator in the Canadian Pacific Railway station. Undaunted, he obeyed orders and began the foundation for a future that led him through practically every phase of freight traffic work from helping in construction and running a ballast train to shed porter, billing clerk, telegraph operator and undertaking the “trick” of train dispatcher.

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Dundalk knew him as agent for a year and liked him, but the canny Galtonians got better acquainted during a longer stay. In Galt they were not averse to sandwiching a little Irish with their Scotch and the ingredients were mixed with success. Mr. Lanigan was accepted at par as a sterling neighbor, a good churchman and a valuable municipal asset. He did much to band the business men together by encouraging and arranging the most pleasant rail outings for merchants and manufacturers which the city ever participated in. He took part with several leading citizens in weekly talkfests on various topics, extending his general knowledge and debating powers and was founder of the Toadstool Club in the days when Bob Scott, Robert Ferrah, Martin Todd, the malster, and others gathered with him to receive John Strachan and Malcolm MacGregor of the “Erie,” John Hunter of Allan Line, Joe Hickson of N.Y.C. & H.R.R., with Jimmie Duthie and Miles Overend of Dominion Line.

When he was agent at Galt the Canadian Pacific Railway opened their depot at London, Ont., with a banquet in the new building to commemorate the event. Officials who had arranged the function requested W. B. Lanigan to respond to one of the principal toasts. He acquitted himself so well in his presentation of the subject then and on another occasion at the Imperial Hotel in Galt, when his name was coupled with the district agricultural interests, that General Manager David McNicol felt convinced that the young man could be better used in more important work and he was soon assigned to the duties of Traveling Freight Agent ensuring gradual advancement and prominence.

On one occasion during the period that Mr. Lanigan was City Freight Agent at Toronto, when cautious agents had to figure four different combinations to obtain the best quotation to British Columbia, the writer, in competition with “C.P.R.”, submitted a shipper an accurate rate but not the current minimum weight, which also fluctuated. Mr. Lanigan soon accidentally stumbled on this error in the course of his day’s rounds and came without delay, only to myself, about the matter, discussing the inadvertent oversight in a quiet, most friendly and gentlemanly way and the incident, which could have been magnified, was heard of no more. This is a sample of one of his traits of character and training that prompts men to say “He pours oil on the troubled waters” and smooths the ripples that inevitably arise between his employers and their host of patrons.

It was George T. Lanigan, a New York Journalist, who some years ago wrote “The Akoond of Swat is dead—that’s what’s the matter”, which made him over night one of America’s high salaried, most talked of newspaper men, and his brother “Billy” has oratorical gifts and is lucid with tongue and pen. He is an effective and witty after dinner speaker who can be depended on to drive home facts in a pleasing manner, and in 1900 when the late Phil. Slatter, City Passenger Agent, Grand Trunk Railway, Toronto, was president of the Canadian Ticket Agents’ Association, Mr. Lanigan delivered to that organization at their annual banquet in the Walker House, Toronto, a humorous and finished address proving that Moses was the first genuine passenger emigration agent and that the very widely known and popular “C.P.R.” official,56 W. T. Dockrill, was the second because of his marked success in directing large parties of settlers beyond the Red River.

W. B. Lanigan has not been unmindful of former assistants and several from Old Ontario, having merited his imprimatur, followed him westward and are justifying his confidence.

The United States railway world has produced from time to time, and held up to democratic public approval, scores of men of indomitable will and working capacity who have wrested recognition and advancement “from the ground up” to the highest executive honors capital could bestow; for instance, C. W. Brown, president of the New York Central Lines, who once piled ties along the C.M. & St. P.R., for a living, or rodmen who now control the great United States Government affinity, the Pennsylvania System, as well as a few naturalized “Americans” with Canadian lines, but I do not recall a “native son”, laboring always with one company, whose record surpasses the many sided experiences—hard at the time—of the official who has been for ten years Assistant Freight Traffic Manager at Winnipeg. This golden west gateway is a strategical point to the wide-a-wake corporation employing W. B. Lanigan, he measures up to requirements.

As this article goes to press his appointment as Freight Traffic Manager, Canadian Pacific Railway, Montreal, is announced.

❦ ❦ ❦

The Late James Charlton.

At no period in the world’s history have those fundamentals of a stable, social structure—morals, fidelity and sympathy—been burdened with more significance to humanity than at present and in alluding to the strengthening bonds which link three Anglo-Saxon nations, it would seem not inopportune to dwell on the characteristics of a gentleman, a Briton who was highly endowed with those basic virtues and who, in passing, left their indelible impress on his personal relations and throughout a long life of active railway experience in England, Canada and United States.

Born 1832 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, James Charlton was reared where steam railway traditions were coined, as George Stephenson the great inventor originated there, shops for the manufacture of the first locomotives were located in Newcastle and the old town became an important57 railway centre. Then was created a new motive for boyhood dreams and the power and fascination of engines and trains focussed the attention of many men noted later.

In 1845, when thirteen, young Charlton engaged with the Newcastle & Carlisle Railway and from that time ideas of serious business and the elements of a splendid character began to mature and array themselves as convictions.

In twelve years he rose by sheer ability from the threshold to the position of chief clerk and cashier in a period when meteoric promotions in staid old England were most uncommon and following the example of Joseph Hickson, afterwards (Sir Joseph), and W. K. Muir, from the same neighborhood, he answered in 1852 the call of the west, entering the audit office of the Great Western Railway of Canada at Hamilton, Ont., during the regime of Messrs. Brydges, Reynolds and Swinyard. Mathematically alert, his penchant for details won for him the title of General Auditor and to these duties were soon added those of the General Passenger and Ticket Agent of the line.

He was extremely particular as to uniform business methods and required from his staff strict conformity with this rule in the handling of correspondence, files and care of papers. He would not tolerate litter nor unanswered communications, but insisted on a prompt or tentative reply to letters and telegrams the day they were received. If it were not possible to make a definite reply to a communication the writer was unfailingly informed of the receipt of his letter which would be given immediate and further attention. While in Canada, Mr. Charlton made many acquaintances and some intimate friendships that were not interrupted during the balance of his life. He unconsciously attracted younger men, compelling their respect and in commercial circles was classed as one of the young country’s early railway pioneers.

Responding in 1870 to the insistence of Opportunity, he transferred his allegiance to the North Missouri Railway as General Passenger Agent, but only until January 1st, 1871, when he assumed in his fortieth year, the important position of General Passenger and Ticket Agent of Chicago & Alton Railway under President Blackstone, at the time that financier and his associates secured control of the North Missouri Railway. This Railway shortly after became the St. Louis, Kansas City & Northern Railway, and in the late 80’s was merged into the Wabash System. Mr. Charlton attained a unique and deserved prominence in his chosen sphere of progressive “American” railroading, and to these new responsibilities he brought to bear his now well developed, zealous and forceful business axioms, and an absolute loyalty and fidelity to the corporation, and in particular, the officers to whom he reported.

He was naturally inclined towards high ideals in life and loved Right, because it was right. His word was as good as his bond: his YES meant YES and his NO meant NO, and no person was ever able to twist his answer into any other meaning and get away with it. His associates in business never doubted for a single moment any statement he made and relied on his carrying out his promises and agreement to the letter. Figuratively speaking, he was a human prototype to the sturdy oak or a solid English bridge, speeding58 the multitudes safely on their journey, indulgent to the hurricanes of youthful hastiness and impervious to trivialities.

The first half of a popular expression, “The nineteenth century belonged to the United States, but the twentieth will be Canada’s,” was acknowledged after the close of the Civil War and concurrent with the rapid expansion of American railway facilities, Canada suffered a heavy exodus across the border of youthful brain and brawn in which Mr. Charlton later played a part. He was the friend of young men who would take hold and make an effort in the railroad business and he probably brought from Canada to the United States, and started on their careers there, a larger number than any other official engaged in traffic affairs, who found him painstaking in his efforts to educate them in the right way to handle their work. He was a martinet regarding that important essential Punctuality and it is said of him that he was never known to be late one minute beyond the hour appointed for any meeting or business engagement. Always an early riser, he breakfasted never later than 6.30 in the morning, sat down precisely to the minute at 12.00 o’clock for luncheon and took his dinner at 6.00 o’clock every evening.

When at headquarters he never missed being the first man in his office, 8.00 to 8.15 a.m., thus anticipating the regular office opening hour, 8.30 a.m. He invariably left his office at 5.00 p.m. daily, walking the three and a half mile journey to and from his residence when conditions were favorable. These unusually methodical habits were the occasion of considerable comment among other officers and business confreres. Mr. Charlton hated a lie, scorned misrepresentation of any kind and positively would not permit anyone to remain in his employ who let liquor secure the upper hand, and whose behaviour and home life threatened to bring the railway company into disrepute.

Unlike the majority of employers and railroad officials, it is known that he recognized a good man by paying him well and also assisting him to grasp opportunities for his betterment with other railways and those who worked under him at one time are now holding official positions on several railroads throughout the west and in some of the eastern states.

Loyal and fair himself, he deeply appreciated such qualities in others and rewarded with sympathetic interest and substantial assistance those long service colleagues who became embarrassed through injury, ill health or declining years. They were protected by assignment to easier positions: with the generous sanction of his executive chiefs—obtained by going “to the front” in person—Mr. Charlton secured additional funds of the Company to tide over periods of unusual expense incurred by several who, through service rendered and fidelity to the Company’s interests, he knew merited thoughtful consideration. I remember being informed of an instance respecting the case of an old friend, for twenty-five years with Mr. Charlton in the service of the Chicago & Alton and other railroads, who contracted an admittedly fatal disorder and who was carried on the pay roll until death, the Company defraying as well, the cost of medical attention and nurse constantly in attendance for a period of two years.

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The Chicago Observer declared in 1896 that the Chicago & Alton Railway was recognized as one of the most convenient and luxurious of American railroads, that it was the first to run sleeping cars, to have dining cars, inaugurating also the first free reclining chair cars and reminded the public to bear in mind that these paying innovations—quickly imitated—were largely due to the Company’s indefatigable chief of passenger traffic.

The New York Tribune stated that Mr. Charlton was the ablest and most widely known General Passenger Agent in America at the time he relinquished passenger traffic duties to become the first Chairman of the newly organized Trans-Continental Passenger Association comprised then of probably fifty transportation lines. For thirteen years, or until death, he discharged the comprehensive obligations of that position to the satisfaction of a not always unanimous body of ticket and traffic experts and his excellent judgment and ability as an arbitrator on vexed questions was often most essential.

As the lines of this paragraph are being transferred from mind to page in the rolling train the transparent frozen surface of Hamilton Bay, dotted with an ice boat and a few skaters, lies a few yards below and stretches away to beach and bar, with a colony of fishing shanties squatting in the cove not far from the location of the awful “Des jardins Canal” wreck, March, 1857. Sixty years ago, over the same surface James Charlton skated and scudded on an old pair of “double mooleys” with screws in their heels and he enjoyed this sport ever after. During his life in Chicago he frequently indulged his fondness for the pastime. Railroading Hamiltonians who praise their bay, may not recall hearing that the late Samuel R. Callaway, ex-President of the New York Central Railway when a stenographer—was devoted to rowing on the same sheet of water, that his brother W. R. Callaway, G.P.A., Soo Line, also Alex. Hilton, P.T.M., Frisco System and Messrs. J. Horsburgh and John J. Byrne, prominent officials of the Southern Pacific Railway Coast Lines, were wont to fish therein.

Although a splendid speaker, very widely known, and possessing also an extended acquaintance with prominent people, James Charlton never wore his heart on his sleeve and sincerely wished to avoid publicity. Most of his leisure was spent with his family, and being a man of letters—in his unusually large and well selected English library. He was an authority on national, international and historical matters, wrote for the London Times of early United States railway building, did some reviewing of books for friendly editors and appreciated good poetry. Myles Pennington in “Railways and Other Ways” says that for a time he published portions of Browning’s works in the Chicago & Alton official railway guide, distributing as many as 10,000 copies of the issue per month until their preparation became too arduous.

In his business relations with others he was the standard of courtesy. Morally and in every way absolutely clean, this white bearded Nestor of passenger men was a grand old man. Is it not a gratification, a mental bath and an inspiration to read of and know about men of this type, particularly in high places.

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Photographs courtesy of Canadian Railway & Marine World

RECIPROCITY IN BRAINS

Railways, Steamships and Commerce know no boundaries

Executive and operating officials of Canadian railroads born under the Stars and Stripes

Their characteristics and what they plan and accomplish for investors, traveling comfort and international traffic form part of our daily reading

  1. Right Hon. Lord Shaughnessy, K.C., V.O., President and Chairman, C.P.R.

  2. The late Sir William van Horne, former President C.P.R.

  3. The Late C. M. Hays, former Pres’t G.T.R.

  4. F. F. Backus, Gen’l Manager, T.H. & B.R.

  5. C. A. Hayes, General Manager, Canadian Government Railways, E.L.

  6. E. J. Chamberlin, Ex-President, G.T.R.

  7. W. S. Cookson, Gen. Pass. Agent, G.T.R.

  8. U. E. Gillen, Vice-President, G.T.R.

  9. C. G. Bowker, Gen’l Sup’t, G.T.R.

10. R. L. Fairbairn, Gen. Pass. Agt, C.N.R.

11. G. C. Jones, Assistant to President, G.T.R.

12. G. M. Bosworth, Vice-President, C.P.R.

13. Howard G. Kelley, President, G.T.R.

Mercury the messenger, fleet and comely herald, renowned in temple and forum, was a pet of the ancients. Without demur they pedestaled him as courier of the gods, rival of swift sea birds and desseminator of tidings from all parts of the world. The ready inclination to laud dispatch, prevalent in those misty, cob-webbed eras of mythology, survives after cycles of ages and to-day dwellers on this mundane sphere observe history repeat itself.

That vital requisite—speedy transportation by land and water for the beings and news of the universe—dovetails so exactly with the modern spirit of expansion that the men responsible for mechanism underlying onward movement, unwittingly compel admiration. They wear the laurel, remaining the nation’s favorites until the “powers that be” turn thumbs the other way.

In no branch of human endeavor does contention with competitor, for the plaudits and purse of the public, wax keener than in the realm of railroading and America is the arena where the fascinating game is embellished with rare finesse. Achievement is sweet to the ambitious and in this scientific pursuit—the result of which is constantly subjected to acid test by a discriminating people—men of brain and brawn strive mightily for humanity’s greater safety, waging a ceaseless campaign far more productive of good than were the colonization feats of conquering Roman legions.

After the triumph of Lincoln’s noble purpose and binding of the nation’s wounds, folks slept in their beds. The great emancipator’s legacy—justice, forbearance, charity—stirred men profoundly and his appeals for amity revitalized the myriad dormant avocations of peace, foreshadowing an epoch of unparalleled activity. During five decades since, there has been work to do in United States of America and worthy men to do it. Uncle Sam has no commendable physical qualification if you concede him not two most perceptive normal optics together with an eye in the back of his head. In nepotism an unbeliever, with scant indulgence for clannishness and caste, this allegorical personage suffered all applicants to joust with his stalwart native sons and demonstrate their fitness to maintain the dignity of labor—the basic agency in creating his country’s present commercial pre-eminence. Was Solomon wiser? Behold the 256,547 miles of steel highway under operation in United States in this year of grace, which encompass the land like the network of veins in your torso, bringing each remote part into communion with the centres of life.

To the gradual accomplishment of this stupendous undertaking came a swelling stream of silver, ripening judgment, indomitable patience and a battalion of optimistic Canadians to “make good measure”.

Down the avenue of years, back as far as 1840, when the movement, unlike that northward to-day, was almost a stampede south, Canada had been loaning United States the best of her bone and sinew. Thousands of determined, capable young men craving new worlds to conquer, burned their bridges and sought a future midst beckoning possibilities which the Union62 held out to the youth of the day. Honestly received and judged, their colleagues verdict doth attest a high percentage have shared the burden in providing transportation, that paramount essential in advancing civilization.

Prophetic was Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s forecast “The nineteenth century belonged to United States but the twentieth will be Canada’s”, when one reflects that the year 1909 yielded 138,000,000 bushels of grain and beheld 90,966 shrewd Yankees, (Messieurs, your pardon), cross with cash and chattels to John Bull’s domain to participate in garnering 400,000,000 bushels in 1915 and 200,000,000 bushels in 1917. This exodus is a straw indicating one quarter from which blows the breeze. Will the outgoing tide float with it the scores of former Canadians who have, through industry and recognizance of trust, mortised into every department of railroading in United States? Will these naturalized, integral units in business and social organizations governed from Washington, sever the moorings of environment, association, intermarriage, to return to the land of their birth? Probably not. But who knows: the answer slumbers in the womb of the future.

What a deal of strenuous argument would have sufficed to coax James J. Hill, wizard of finance and foresight, from his art, enriched castle, St. Paul, to the farm near the village of Rockford, Ontario, where in boyhood, he followed the lowing herd and foraged for squirrels. Occasionally he sought denizens of the deep along the St. Lawrence or Labrador Coast, and he reached into fields and factories of the Dominion for tonnage, but the wealth and power he possessed and wielded so astutely behind the scenes for Great Northern Railway, et al, were not stumbled on with energies relaxed. His mature opinion regarding economic conditions and conservation of the country’s natural resources, was the outgrowth of years of watchfulness and a peculiar bent for accuracy in conclusion builded primarily on a heritage of worthy foundations. Like those homespun idols of the people, Presidents Grant, Garfield and McKinley, he lived close to the soil absorbing bodily vigor and clarity of judgment amid homely surroundings.

Biographies of such outstanding characters as Jim Hill make inspiring reading. If this generation’s youthful male population cultivate childhood’s imitative proclivities they could, with profit, emulate the perseverance of another young man from the same neighborhood. Foremost amongst those whose life work in the drama of ever changing railway activities has introduced them to a theatre for energetic effort in the sunny south, must be listed the name of W. B. Scott, President at New Orleans of the Texas Lines of the great Southern Pacific System. Guelph, Canada, with streets named to commemorate many Scottish cities, proudly boasts that he is her son. His success is the concrete result of hard work along given lines, and his journey from the duties of messenger boy in the freight shed of G.W.R.—G.T.R., via the route of C.P.R., Winnipeg, “Union Pacific” Omaha, Santa Fe at Chillecothe, &c., &c., to power and wealth is a fascinating study for younger railway men. He had been Director of Maintenance of Way & Operation for S.P.R. at Chicago, and his present most important position, helping to determine the policy of the vast network which annually transports hundreds of thousands of the world’s63 pleasure and health seekers, will give you an idea of the calibre of the man. He is modest to a degree, never reads what is printed about himself, is thoroughly inured by long experience, to the “hardships” of a private car and was well known by the late E. H. Harriman.

Close to Niagara Escarpment, at Hamilton, Ontario, where S. R. Callaway won his bride, railroading cast its spell broadcast, inoculating many promising youngsters. Graduates of the “Great Western”, “Hamilton & Northwestern” and “Northern” schools are scattered from Halifax to San Diego, from Vancouver to Honduras. James Charlton, first “G.P.A.” of the Great Western Railway, Canada, was a beacon light in guiding numerous proteges “up and along”. You may wager none of them imitated the behaviour of young Keenedge who, when saluted with “Does the train leave at Eleven sharp?” blandly replied, “Yes, or Eleven slow, if you like!” They all memorized and hummed the motto “Learn to labor and to wait”. John J. Byrne, from the same city, present Asst. Passr. Traffic Manager, Santa Fe Coast Lines, took up the refrain when setting out to contend with life’s odds and handicaps, and by doing the thing to be done with earnestness and fidelity, he also has compelled recognition, a distinguished place among his fellows and Mammon’s silver recompense. Through a similar “course of sprouts” and monotonous introduction to details passed James Horsburgh Jr., Genl. Passr. Agent, Southern Pacific Railway. With canny disinclination to “Bid the devil good-day before meeting him”, he philosophically set the pace in shouldering onerous duties and accomplished important results with the aid of a large corps of efficient assistants.

A contemporary of this trio and candidate for the order of merit is Alexander Hilton, or “Handsome Hilton”, as ladies know him, who also was born at Hamilton because his mother happened to be staying there at the time. He was “captured young” and as a junior developed that moral fibre and eager spirit which buoyed him while climbing the grade to the position of Passenger Traffic Manager, Frisco Lines.

Robert Somerville, a “C. & A.” Chicago veteran, now President Judson Company, was a Hamiltonian; likewise Dave Bowes, their General Manager. So was Harry Jameson, an auburn D.P.A., P.M.R. Harry Parry, indefatigable Asst. Genl. Passr. Agent, “N.Y.C. Lines”, Buffalo, the Jago Brothers, for years with the “West Shore” and A. W. Ecclestone, Dist. Passr. Agent, Nickel Plate, New York, claim the Ambitious City as birthplace. All keep in more than telepethic communication with friends there.

It is chronicled in the log that the bluff, jovial W. F. Herman, former “G.P.A.” of “C. & B.” Line, Cleveland, who takes to water like reynard to a partridge, got a bowing acquaintance with a vessel’s interior economy under W. K. Domville’s tutelage in the old “G.W.R.” shops at Hamilton. To this city, every now and then, comes W. L. Stannard, General Agent, C. & N.W.R., Detroit, on a brief visit to his respected sire, which stimulates the memory of other days.

Over the hill via Caledonia and on to the railroading centre St. Thomas,64 you hear the homeguard recall with satisfaction the various milestones passed by James A. Stewart, the son of a “Grand Trunk” railway man here, in his march from a minor clerkship to the lucrative appointment of General Passenger Agent, Rock Island Lines, Kansas City. In Kansas City is also J. D. Dewan of London, freight agent of the fine new union terminal. Efficiency is vital at this busy southwestern gateway.

Of such material does the great league of passenger traffic experts consist and their mission has meant an evolution in train growth unprecedented on two hemispheres. To attain high-water mark in comfort, speed and elegance, their eternal vigilance and rivalry has balked at naught that invention could suggest in devices of steel, electricity, rare, imported woods, marquetry and65 costly draperies to adorn and strengthen the wheeled and floating palaces in which they evince unbounded pride. Youth must have its sway, and because of the wanderlust in their veins, hundreds of these Northern blades, fortified with little but a sound mind in a sound body, elementary knowledge well instilled and an instinctive distrust of luxury’s blandishments, sallied forth to make the mirage, “Green are hills far away” a pulsating actuality. With none of Caesar’s braggadocio and red fire illuminating their advance, a goodly number could well appropriate that old pagan’s slogan, “Veni, Vidi, Vici”.

William J. Jackson,

President, Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railway.

The operating department of the railroads seems to have had a special attraction for the capabilities of many Canadians, which is born out by the outstanding examples mentioned in this partial resume. Samuel G. Strickland, General Manager, C. & N.W.R., was reared at Lakefield, Ont., in Kawartha Lakes locality and it takes a good man to please the veteran Marvin Hughitt who always expected a high quality of service.

Yet another United States railroader who was cradled in Canada is W. J. Jackson, former Vice-President of the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railway, and now President and Receiver of this property at Chicago, who has recollections of earlier days when he was “Johnnie” Jackson, working on the “inwards” desk with the “G.T.R.” at Toronto before he went west with the late George B. Reeve when the latter was traffic manager with the Chicago & Grand Trunk Railway.

There comes to mind the names of half a dozen operating officers located at different points of the compass beginning at the “Atlantic” with John McCraw, Superintendent, Central Vermont Railway, New London, Conn.,66 born at Craigvale and well trained in all departments by the Grand Trunk Railway. He knows the game from billing express, handling the throttle or shifting a bridge at night, and by his urbanity and quiet effectiveness made a reputation along the Sound. George Reith, Superintendent Virginian Railway at Norfolk, Va., who gravitated from unobtrusive Hensall to scenes of greater scope; John T. Lewis, Superintendent Tennessee Central Railway, Nashville, Tenn., from Hamilton, who did not “pass the buck” but shouldered his responsibilities; A. L. Boughner, a son of St. Thomas, now Superintendent of Terminals for “M.K. & T.” at St. Louis, the road that operates the “Katy Flyer”; W. H. Jones, formerly with “O.S.L.”, Pocatello, at present Superintendent of Southern Pacific Ry., Riverside, Cal., and J. D. Brennen from Brockville, beside the St. Lawrence, Superintendent at Sacramento, for the same extensive system.

Indexed with Uncle Sam’s adopted sons let us register the names of Arthur G. Wells, Los Angeles, California, General Manager, Santa Fe Coast Lines, the son of a Guelph, Ontario, postmaster, whose work in Detroit, Toledo, Cincinnati, &c., helped him to climb the ladder like a fireman at a fire. Likewise, his brother, R. E. Wells, a general manager with the San Pedro System, genial Geo. W. Hibbard, formerly A.G.P.A., C.M. & P.S.R., Seattle, and A. D. Charlton, A.G.P.A., Northern Pacific Railway, Portland, Oregon. There are several others who have found a field for congenial labor along the Pacific Slope where perennial verdancy carpets each beautiful valley and after a business trip in that region Mr. Geo. T. Bell, P.T.M., G.T.R., told me after returning, some time ago, that “the woods were full of them”. No doubt, he had in mind the case of Mr. D. W. Campbell. Born in Hanover, Ont., about 1858, this village boy moved along step by step from quiet surroundings to a place in the sun that demands accurate judgment in conserving public safety and promoting the expectations of capital. Durham was where he learned the difference between an engine cab and a coupe, how to abstract way bills and also prime the telegraph battery jars with blue stone. He dispatched trains with the G.T.R., at Stratford, with the C.P.R. at Moose Jaw, the C.B. & Q.R. at Dubuque and the N.P.R. at Missoula, Montana, gaining confidence and reputation. For some time his headquarters was at Tekoa on the “O.R. & N.Co.” As Superintendent of this line he was transferred to Portland and to Seattle. Later the Southern Pacific Railway engaged his services for executive duties at terminals beside Puget Sound, which were the forerunners of assignments in California, culminating in the berth of Asst. Genl. Manager, Southern Pacific Ry, Los Angeles, as gazetted in the current issue of Official Guide.

Geo. W. Hibbard,

Of Geo. W. Hibbard Co., Brokers, Seattle,

Formerly A.G.P.A., C.P.R., Montreal, and G.P.A., Puget Sound Route.

The lustre of that becoming virtue modesty, dims not if blossoming in a railroader’s physique, but when a prominent man like John Francis, General Passenger Agent, Burlington Route, side steps a niche in “the hall of fame”, deprecating the reproduction of his photographed features, and explaining,, “Twenty years have elapsed since I faced a machine that would stand for such an operation”, his bashfulness checks “Over” and generates regret. The baptismal archives at Longueuil, Quebec, record the initial appearance of Mr. Francis, but he has been “Present” many times since and proven an entertaining68 raconteur. Frank F. Barbour, retiring G.P.A., Rutland Railway, was cradled at Montreal, and east of this former possession of King Louis, at Newport, in the maritime “finnan haddie” province of Nova Scotia, Eben E. MacLeod was born. The path he traversed to Chairmanship of Western Passenger Association led through Eastern Canada and eight different ticket office positions in various states. Mr. MacLeod courted responsibilities, always received a square deal under the Stars & Stripes and the end is not yet, as he is in his prime and looks the part.

The hands of destiny which mold futures, often weave a woof of inscrutable, unfamiliar design. Had James Webster, the persistent Owen Sound student, been informed by D. McNicol in olden days when they were together on “Toronto, Grey & Bruce”, that his horoscope prognosticated “Freight Traffic Manager” in 1918, “Jimmie” would have scorned the soft impeachment and played sluggard in swallowing the Scotchman’s capsule. Yet, James Webster, master of detail, the Nickel Plate graduate whom “N.Y.C.” has exalted, deserves a bronze in the gallery of immortals to radiate encouragement for the struggling faithful and confusion to grumblers. Mr. W. A. Terry, Asst. Freight Traffic Manager, N.Y.C. Lines, Chicago, spent some time in his youth in Canada. Minus the sustained efforts of these officials, of their passenger confreres and the gentlemen comprising the solicitation staff identified with the traffic departments, the railways could boast of gilded coaches and a nickel rail and then be doomed to failure, notwithstanding the swan songs sung by some of our operating friends, declared a very prominent traffic officer in the Northwest.

It is estimated by financiers that $500,000,000 were to be spent in Canada during 1910 to meet proposed expansion by the Government, great corporations and railways. Expectations did not bulk so large when W. D. Carrick, who is Genl. Baggage Agent, St. Paul Road, resigned from the Great Western Railroad in 1879 to obey Horace Greely’s command. Excepting five years in “G.W.R.” service, where was laid the foundation of practical knowledge, his career has been one of continuous devotion to a single company. You will observe, if you have seen him, that the cares of state make scant impress on the features of this wholesome looking gentleman who considers riches but the baggage of fortune.

Mr. Carrick came from Galt, Ont., and the brothers Albert and Thomas H. MacRae who manage and edit the popular employees magazine of the Santa Fe Railway also originated there. From prosaic Guelph, where bare-footed boys duck in the deep holes of the Riverlet Speed, came C. E. Dutton, former Genl. Agent at Helena, Mont., for Great Northern Railway. Eugene Duval, Omaha, A.G.W.A., of C.M. & St.P.R., years ago thrived lustily on the ozone of Quebec and Colonel W. J. Boyle, G.A.P.D., Milwaukee, now and then harks back to former days in Chatham, where also Charley McPherson and Geo. J. Ryan—recently Genl. Industrial Commissioner of “Great Northern”, now with the Soo Line—learned their P’s and Q’s. To this incomplete catalogue of aspirants to stellar honors who investigate balances, tariffs and interlocking switches, as bees do the flowers, may be included J. H. Ellis, from Belleville69 beside the placid “Quinte”, Secretary of “L. & N.”, Louisville, F. W. Main, Toronto, Auditor “C.R.I. & P.”, Kincardine’s standard bearer, W. Hogarth, Auditor El Paso & Southwestern, and Charles A. Gormally so capably representing the “G.T.R.” in the heart of things at Chicago. Affable Alex. Macdougall, D.P.A., I.C.R., St. Paul, John W. Kearns, D.P.A., P.M.R., Detroit, and C. R. Graves, C.P.A., Salt Lake Route, Los Angeles, when punching the time limit at the ticket window in days gone by, may remember the colloquy—“Can you direct me to the best hotel in this town?” asked an unacquainted railway man of another as he stepped off a train. “I can brother,” said he going away, “but I hate to do it.” “Why?” “Because you will think after you have seen it that I’m a liar”.

1. Charles A. Gormaly, Commercial Agent, G.T.R., Chicago, Ill.

2. John W. Kearns, District Passenger Agent, Pere Marquette Railway, Detroit, Mich.

3. Geo. O. Somers, Secretary, “U.S.A.” Government Northern Railway Committee, St. Paul, Ex-General Freight Agent, G.N. Railway, Ex-Traffic Manager, United Fruit Co.

4. The Late Alex. McIntosh, of McIntosh Brothers, Milwaukee, Railway Contractors.

5. John McCraw, Traffic Manager, Groton Iron Works, Groton, Conn., builders for United States Shipping Board, Ex-Superintendent Central Vermont Railway, New London.

The proverb “Economy—easy chair of old age”, expounds a cardinal requisite in railway construction. Deference to this admonition spelled marked success financially for Donald and James A. MacIntosh, “Men from Glengarry”, a team of contractors and graders favorably known to western railroad builders. Jealous of reputation, by hewing to the line they made good where others often failed and their forty years of unremitting effort were crowned by enjoyment of the premium. Speaking over the casket of Donald Alexander McIntosh in Forest Home Cemetery Chapel, Milwaukee, 1915, the Reverend James Oastler, D.D., said in part, “These Glengarry men are sons of the men who had come from the highlands and islands of Scotland in the earlier days—and mighty men they were—pioneers—builders of empires. Their manner of70 life bred in them hardiness of frame, alertness of sense, readiness of resource, and a courage that grew with peril. Fighting was like wine to them, when the fight was worth while.”

We of the United States, can congratulate ourselves that some of the Glengarry men found their way across the border, and brought with them their courage, their resourcefulness, and their love of the open. They did not ask for an opening. They asked this question: “What does the world need to have done?” Then they set about doing it. Donald A. McIntosh was a man from Glengarry.

I very distinctly recall my last visit with him and he convinced me that there was within him a superb nature, a fine generosity—that physically and mentally he was afraid of no man.

Dr. W. H. Stennett was born on a farm beside Lake Simcoe, Ontario, in 1832. When seventeen he settled in Rock Island, Illinois, as a junior with a druggist, meanwhile gratifying his inclination to browse among books. Later he was given charge of the production in a department of a chemical manufacturing company and being an omnivarous reader of publications pertaining to chemical, medical and surgical knowledge, he undertook the study of medicine, graduating at the Medical College of Missouri at St. Louis in 1859. With a partner he commenced practice at Bloomington, Ill., and Miss Clara Hughitt became his wife there. In 1867 Doctor Stennett retired from practice to become General Agent, Illinois Central Railway, St. Louis, and six years later was appointed “G.P.A.” of C. & N.W.R. From 1884–7 he held the position of Assistant to General Manager, afterwards assuming the duties of Auditor of Expenditures with the same company and he retained his supervision of that department for 19 years. While he was General Passenger Agent of C. & N.W.R., his duties required that he travel a great deal. In his later years he preferred to remain at home, and during the last twenty-five years of his life, while working for the C. & N.W.R., he did not take a vacation, nor during that time did he spend a single night away from his home.

He loved flowers, spent much time in the cultivation of many varieties, and carried on regular correspondence with friendly horticulturists. Dr. Stennett was interested in a wide range of subjects and derived much pleasure from discussions with intimates among railway officials and literary people.

He was a man of determination and died practically in harness, having left his duties only a few days before his end, and on July 22nd, 1915, the date of his death, he dressed, bade adieu to his library and conversed with his family two minutes before his spirit took flight.

The Great Northern Railway has at St. Paul an Asst. Genl. Passr. Agent from Sarnia, Ontario, in the person of W. R. Mills; Mr. J. A. Emslie, Genl. Agent Santa Fe at Milwaukee, originated in Canada. John F. Barron, Genl. Agent, Union Pacific Ry, Chicago, came from London, where his after business hours accomplishment as a clever monologue artist and dancer, were perfected with his townsman and associate, the metropolitan star George Primrose. M. O. Barnard, Genl. Agent, N.P.R., Buffalo, N.Y., is a lad from the land of71 lacrosse and Sid. Dewey representing the “G.T.R.” at New York, is a brother of the Grand Trunk’s freight traffic manager.

George Barnes,

General Agent, Northern Pacific Railway; Vice-President, Detroit Transportation Club, pictured promoting Third Liberty Loan.

So enamored is William R. Callaway, Genl. Passr. Agent, Soo Line, of the scenery and hunter’s paradise adjacent to his line that he dines with implements mounted with buckhorn purloined through a coach window by some friendly sharpshooter. He has ever been a pronounced independent in his methods, basking in no borrowed brilliancy, and as an original and persistent advertiser since the time of his regime as “D.P.A.”, “C.P.R.”, Toronto, this gentleman merits his unique reputation. It is whispered that when “relieving” some years ago at an Ontario hamlet, one seductive spring morning “W. R.” quit angling in the family aquarium, shut up shop and prepared to separate a few shiners from a creek close to the depot. Crawling well out on an overhanging branch he dropped anchor. Being then not versed in the gentle art tight rope balancing, drowsiness or anxiety soon precipitated a crisis. The would be Walton turned a couple of neat flip flaps and straightway “Father William” fathomed the moisture beneath. The fat hotelkeeper’s “Inexpressibles”, as Thackeray terms the garment, was the only alternative afterwards and the “G.P.A.” admits the ensemble would have made a hungry horse turn from his oats.

“If feasting, rise”, saith Opportunity: “Cities and fields I walk, I knock unbidden once at every gate.” Forsooth, the elusive sprite does and sometimes peers into secluded corners. Besides being awake at the psychological moment, a clever quartette who found “Hustle while you wait” their staunchest prop in reaching the plums were Herbert A. Jackson, W. R. Callaway, J. A. Holden and Geo. O. Somers. Mr. Somers started in life with none of the helps designated as luck. No doubt, he thought of ease but worked on through each consecutive group of wearying exactions. As the architect of his own fortune the progress of this village boy may be gauged by his former title, traffic manager of United Fruit Company’s fleet of eighty craft, to which William Mullins, of72 London and Toronto, promptly succeeded and to-day directs his corporation’s developments in Cuba.

E. F. L. Sturdee,

General Agent, Passenger Department,

Canadian Pacific Railway, Boston, Mass.

A Maritime Province Product from St. John, N.B.

Energy unsparingly applied was James A. Holden’s key to the door of advancement, which once open disclosed the road to preferment growing smoother and wider. Always in the atmosphere of moguls and shunts when a stripling, nurtured in routine as biller, telegrapher, superintendent’s clerk, agent, &c., he found it easy after getting in motion, to push on to St. Louis and the Frisco Railway, to an executive place with “C.O. & G.R.”, thence Chicago and the freight traffic managership of Rock Island Lines. Mr. Holden, who is Vice-President of Kansas City Southern Railroad, but just now busy with73 the Director General of Railroads at Washington, intimates that he reached this goal without cause to complain of the way he has been dealt with. He was a railroader’s son from Whitby, Canada, and office boy in ’77 on the now almost forgotten Whitby, Port Perry & Lindsay Railway.

It was the primitive equipment of the pioneer Whitby, Port Perry & Lindsay Railway, meandering through forest and farm, which hypnotized youthful John W. Platten, Port Perry, who became afterwards a Vice-President and influential executive officer of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Prior to this he spent some time with the “G.P.A.” and President of the “Erie” at Cleveland, and had been Treasurer of the deceased Central Bank of Canada, which prepared and qualified him for the position of President and General Manager of United States Trust & Mortgage Company. He is also Chairman for the share-holders of “White Star” common stock and with E. E. Loomis, President “L.V.R.”, made a special train survey and report regarding the value of the “Canadian Northern Ry.” a couple of years ago. Mr. Platten has lately been elected President of the Gulf, Mobile & Northern Railroad. The sponsors of the “L.V.” traffic artery from Niagara to tidewater, “fancied” three other Canucks in the persons of John S. Wood, Asst. Genl. Freight Agent, Geo. W. Hay, General Baggage Agent and N. W. Pringle, A.G.P.A., New York.

Take courage, all ye who falter: retemper the spring in your spine, as hard work, thrift and a mastery of the duties of the desk next above is Mr. Jarvis’s recipe for raising one’s status and stipend. The majority—whether Briton, Frank or Celt—accept this dictum and make obeisance to the inexorable law: wherefore, the sons of “Our Lady of the Snows” cheerfully caught hold and lifted with their cousins. Shoulder to shoulder these joint decendents of kindred mother stock have added to the national wealth by perfecting means for distributing inland and export trade to the widest possible compass. The annual interchange of business between United States and the fatherland of Canadians abroad exceeded $700,000,000, being third to what was transacted before the war with England and Germany, while their collaboration in multiplying communications has wrought incalculable gain to international good will. The natural affinities of the two Anglo Saxon families dominating North America cement the industrial and social fabric.

This deepening of a common sense of attachment is significant and may yet wield a portentous influence on world politics and boundaries. The growth in harmonious intercourse—fostered by the advent into United States prior to 1900 of one in every six persons born in Canada—has derived stimulus from the dependable characteristics of those who have, in the sifting, come within the arc of the limelight. These resolute knights of throttle, lever and key—ex-Canadians of stamina and discernment in railroad building, operation, traffic and finance—rank high as participators in the safeguarding of large and complicated interests. They are in sympathy with the enterprising and restless spirit of their “American” confreres and both seek to wrest the Caduceus, or golden wand of commerce, from Jupiter’s son and hasten forward with development’s message to silent, virgin places and to peoples beyond the seas.

David Hume, historian and observer, declared
“It is better to be born with a cheerful disposition
than inherit an income of ‘Ten Thousand’ a year.”

The gentleman whose features are reproduced on this page possessed that jewel beyond price. Despite vicissitudes in boyhood and stubborn perplexities later, it was his wont to always maintain a kindly, unruffled exterior which seemed to spring from the centre of his being, reflecting an equable temperament and much self-mastery. With this invaluable asset, and other sterling qualifications of mind and method, Samuel Rodger Callaway quietly and steadily spiraled through adverse currents to an altitude75 in the science of railroading, surmounted by the golden legend, “Eighty thousand a year.” In his brief span he attained an eminence in the commercial firmament which most men cease not to dream of, but seldom realize.

Born of English-Scotch stock at Toronto, Canada, December 24th, 1850, the loss of his father summoned him to toil’s daily round early in life. As the champion and counsellor of his mother he was thrust into the arena at the age of thirteen, when he entered the Grand Trunk service under the eye of the late Sir Joseph Hickson, who soon observed his precocious self-control, prudence and business aptitude even at that chrysalis stage.

A four year novitiate beside Superintendent Gilman Cheney, of the Canadian Express Company, was followed by twelve months clerking for William Wallace, Superintendent of the Great Western, Hamilton. His chief recreation then was reading, and mild indulgence in the aquatic pleasures which Burlington Bay permitted.

A secretaryship to W. K. Muir fell to him in 1870, when both joined the fettered D. & M., Detroit, marking young Callaway’s assumption of important responsibilities.

He gave full value for his remuneration, working without friction, like a noiseless machine, and shamed slovens by close application and attention to the smallest commissions, manifesting such executive ability and economy as operating man with the Detroit & Bay City Railway, 1878, that the increasing traffic greatly enhanced the railroad’s value.

At his thirty-fourth milestone, this popular, but strict disciplinarian, began in 1884, for Charles F. Adams, three years of arduous duties as Vice-President and General Manager, Union Pacific Railway, Omaha, directing reconstruction work of magnitude with force and decision. That tells its own story. Can the reader recall a parallel? It was said of him that he knew almost every man in his employ, but he was not aware of how his unfailing courtesy, freedom from ostentation and justice to all inspired personal loyalty.

Always seeking knowledge, he travelled upward, serving three Canadian and nine U.S.A. corporations with an intellectual, sympathetic and expansive grasp of things which pleased magnates and earned his subordinates’ attachment.

He broad-gauged the Toledo, St. Louis & Kansas City Railway, 1887 to 1894, and by going to W. K. Vanderbilt and the Presidency of the Nickel Plate in 1895, a prophecy made years ago was fulfilled. When he married Miss Jane Ecclestone, at Hamilton, June 7th, 1875, Mr. C. C. Trowbridge, his staunch friend, gave him the following letter addressed to W. H. Vanderbilt:

From his patrons and confreres in United States who are said to recognize and place merit before favoritism, honors came fast to this somewhat reticent, easy mannered gentleman with one passion—music and grand opera—which he delighted to indulge at the “Metropolitan” and by playing arias on a magnificent aeolian erected in his home.

Invited to New York to exercise his wisdom in directing the destinies of the L.S. & M.S., and the retirement of Senator Chauncey Depew a few months later signalled the elevation of Mr. Callaway to the Presidency of the N.Y.C. & H.R.R., and affiliated properties, March 30th, 1898, the acknowledged master of one of the greatest business enterprises of the century.

A New York newspaper, commenting on that appointment, said, “It has long been ‘President Callaway’, as he was born Christmas Eve, 1850, and since youth has been a Santa Claus offering to the railways.”

It is related that when William K. Vanderbilt urged Mr. Callaway to accept the Presidency of the American Locomotive Company, because his corporation could not meet the princely salary mentioned in the new contract, the interesting rumor spread so rapidly that it appeared in the press before the new executive had opportunity to acquaint his family how he had become a business man with prospects that would keep the wolf so far from the door that he dare not venture this side of the next concession. The newspaper references came to the notice of his son, a boyish wag at college, who immediately wrote home saying, “Dear Father—I see by yesterday’s paper that you were forced to get another job owing to the extravagance of your family. I want to congratulate you on your great success, for, judging from what the notices say, you have struck an ‘oily’ position.”

Samuel Callaway had spent thirty years of active life time in the railway’s service and was considered a perfect type of the administrative American railroading man through inclination and training from boyhood, conquering difficulties and contending with stern realities without seeking publicity. He did not like to talk, but he knew well how to meet the world and writing of him after his decease, biographers said his business manners were flawless.

When he first went to New York as President of the New York Central Lines there were some who thought a chill had come over the President’s77 office, so long kept beaming—as one writer put it—by the geniality of Senator Depew. The cool reserve of the new President was at first misunderstood, but those who had business with him soon realized that on business matters he was one of the most approachable of men. During office hours he was never diverted from close attention to the company’s affairs.

As a thinker who saw clearly for the financial colleagues of a dozen corporations; as a man of the world discussing big projects in exclusive clubs of the metropolis, his extraordinary judgment was emphasized, but the simplicity of his quieter side, his love of little ones and thought for kith and kin in his native land, were likewise noticeable.

He counted much on the success of his children and was devoted to his family, but was not vouchsafed the anticipated pleasure of their society in later years when his duties would have been less arduous.

At the age of fifty-four, the zenith of capability and ripened opinion, after completing three years as first President of the American Locomotive Company, his mighty brain ceased to originate and execute. To his memory earnest and widespread tribute was paid.

His career was a homily to men pessimistic regarding life’s outlook, who capitulate to cynicism. The example he set cannot soon be forgotten, nor should study of the character and purpose of S. R. Callaway be disregarded by the youth of this generation.

❦ ❦ ❦

From the banks of the winding Avon the boy Shakespeare went forth and his genius revitalized and gave a tremendous impetus to literature and the drama. Were you aware that Stratford in the new world long after produced a son, in youth Tom Jarvis, who is undoubtedly leaving his impress on the peaceful pursuit of international trade. Contend if you will, that it is a far cry to the hedge rows of merrie England for a parallel, for a coincidence; yet there is a modicum of truth in most generalizations. The elect all sing small in the beginnings. The journey of the Bard from obscurity to the throne room was tedious and none the less devious is the pilgrimage from a dingy office in the heel of a freight shed to the Vice-Presidency of one of America’s great railway highways.

Thomas N. Jarvis,

Vice-President, Lehigh Valley Railroad, New York.

A sprig off the geneological tree which inspired the name of a Toronto residential thoroughfare, T. N. Jarvis was born and reared in Stratford, Ont., and at sixteen essayed the study of legal tomes. This was dry,78 unremunerative occupation and about 1870 he exchanged Blackstone for the freight classification, billing desk and, to him, the less monotonous, more congenial railway atmosphere. He proved to be anything but “A square peg in a round hole” and earnest endeavor earned rapid promotions to Paris, Black Rock, Buffalo and Cleveland. At the expiry of seven years he entered the service of the International Fast Freight Line; a twelve month later the Blue Line and in 1880 to the Commercial Express Line. It is related that about this time he visited Cleveland to acquaint a certain high executive official of his contemplated resignation to assume other duties. Suspecting the nature of his errand, every resource of his patron’s diplomacy and palatial home were enlisted to successfully smother the avowal. Disappointed at the outcome, the ambitious Jarvis returned to headquarters to find that a cheque of fair proportions had preceded him as a retainer.

On completion of the “Nickel Plate” in 1883 he organized the Traders’ Dispatch and as manager was the youngest in his class, with a pronounced penchant for ensnaring traffic netting good revenues. The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company had been scrutinizing the trek of the tall, rangy and genial bachelor, Tom Jarvis—with a host of ‘pay streak’ friends from Frisco to Fundy Bay—and they soon made it “worth his while.” In ’98, as their General Eastern Agent at New York, his traveling men garnered cheese, coal, milk, live stock and passenger traffic ad libitum. Circularized again and again, he subsequently made his bow as Assistant General Traffic Manager, Freight Traffic Manager, and in March, 1906, Vice-President.

He modestly attributes it all to hard work and the aim to become familiar with the duties of “the men higher up.” Boys, note that. Cosmopolitan habitues of the Lotus Club, for instance, and friends in Ontario watch his progress with pride and await news of further honors. Now and then they have opportunity to inspect him at close range as guests in his private car.

While the methods of Mr. Jarvis in business are incisive, crisp and convincing, and devoid of much flowery phraseology, he possesses the most approachable and kindly personality, which unconsciously wins the homage of porter and President’s esteem.

Geo. J. Charlton,

Passenger Traffic Manager, Chicago & Alton Railroad and allied systems.

“A pale faced fanatic” Geo. J. Charlton never was and never will be—so his friends declare. The metamorphosis would too grievously trouble him in spirit and torture his avoirdupois. Glance again at the features and physical contour of the Passenger Traffic Manager of “Chicago & Alton,” the cap sheaf to a cluster of four sister transportation corporations, and contradict me, ye phrenological bump feelers, if the X rays do not locate there a large, sympathetic heart, optimism profound, great capacity for work and the ability to enjoy and “Spend money like a sailor.”

Ever since the time his education began in the private and public schools of his birthplace, Hamilton, Canada, where in boyhood he “Snapped the whip” and operated in the moonlit melon patch, George Charlton has been in the centre of the doings. His must have been the hypnotic eye, or he carried one of those heavily charged horse shoe magnets, for the boys and girls all liked him and gravitated in his direction without know-why. How many of his classmates have since made the same good use of their time, think you.

His father was a railroader of international repute, and nurtured in an atmosphere of “ticket affairs,” it was not unnatural the boy’s name should first appear on a railway pay roll in 1875 as messenger in the general passenger department of Chicago & Alton Road.

Thus began the zig zag but successful ascent of Mount Obstacle, covering a span of forty-three years. He was cast out of the right kind of metal and did not falter at the prospect or prove a time server when acting the role of junior, conductor’s clerk, ticket stock recorder, passenger sales accountant and rate expert.

Invariably devoting the best that was in him to his work, he soon realized that the position of understudy conscientiously performed, was a wise and diplomatic plan of action leading to unexpected possibilities. On March 14th, 1885, Mr. Charlton came within the arc of the limelight as Assistant General Passenger Agent of the “Alton.” January 1st, 1900, witnessed him80 accomplish the next logical move in advancing to the position of General Passenger Agent, and during a seven years tenure his jurisdiction was extended to the Toledo, St. Louis & Western Railway, styled the Clover Leaf Route. During December, 1909, the Corporation’s President gave him the right to have emblazoned on his business cards the title he bears to-day.

While this panorama of promotions glides without hindrance across the page to the reader’s brain, he can only imagine but should not overlook the monotonous toil, concentration of purpose and rebuffs smiled down behind the scenes by our subject long before a recital in this form was possible.

The best opportunity to truly sound the depth of a man’s character is to work with and beside him. As you may surmise, George Charlton’s manner of speech and demeanor towards his staff of employees is not rapid, cold and repellant, but a reflection of the desire pulsating within him to interchange enthusiasm, co-operation and loyalty with others, measure for measure. Woe betide the luckless mortal, however, who rouses his ire by flagrantly violating these commandments. This gentleman of tremendous energy and democratic inclinations, always finds time to fraternize with his men, meeting them as equals and apparently enjoying their society as much as they appreciate his.

Kindliness and generosity are his cardinal virtues. They have won for him the affection and compel the highest possible respect of his confreres and those characteristics, coupled with recognized ability, loom large when one attempts an inventory of the causes underlying his success.

The far reaching effect of the recent order issued by Mr. W. G. McAdoo, Director General of Railroads in United States, necessitating the release of many employees of the “Alton” who had been loyal members of Mr. Charlton’s railway family, distressed him keenly and quickened his broad sympathies. He immediately became “a welcome pest” to his influential friends, through unremitting efforts to assist his reluctantly departing staff to other suitable employment.

George Charlton is a votary of Comus, the ancient and rotund god of Merriment and that mythological personage ranks next to his patron saints. He is a well known society and club member, identified with at least a dozen organizations including the Hoos Hoos, Elks, Yacht Club, South Shore Country Club, Union League, Chicago, Green Room Club and Lambs Club, New York; also Hamilton Old Boys’ Association.

He is immensely popular with the traveling public and “man in the street” and they, having in mind the Passenger Traffic Manager of that triangular route linking Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City, agree that the wise man was right when he said “A merry heart doeth good like medicine.”

81

JAMES JEROME HILL

Under other names, the Great Northern Railway owns, leases and operates subsidiary lines in Western Canada, of which the Vancouver, Victoria & Eastern Railway & Navigation Company is the principal—comprising a total mileage of 760 miles and entry is made into Canada by crossing the international border at thirteen different points.

The modern terminal of the V.V. & E.R. & N. Co., Vancouver, B.C., which is owned jointly with Northern Pacific Railway Co., cost over $600,000.

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TRANSPORTATION CLUB OF TORONTO

Scene of Annual Banquet, C. A. Dunning’s Hotel, November 27th, 1914.

F. H. Terry, President, Traveling Agent, G.N.R.

A. J. Taylor, Vice-President, Canadian Agent, C.M. & St. P.R.

D. O. Wood, Vice-President, General Western Agent, Allan Line.

W. J. Langton, Member Executive, Later President; Superintendent, Dominion Transport Co., (C.P.R.)

T. Marshall, Member Executive, later President, Traffic Manager, Board of Trade.

W. A. Gray, Secretary. Contracting Agent, D.L. & W.R.

M. Macdonald, Treasurer, Assistant Inspector of Weighing, G.T.R.

“The chairman is conductor on this train”
“You won’t be asked to make a speech”

A REVELER’S DREAM

Aye Reuben lad, ye missed a treat

Last Friday when you failed to meet

One hundred transportation men

Convened from city, burg and glen,

For the second yearly dinnerfest

Of fish and fowl and sparkling jest.

They sought the board from moor and fen:

Hoot mon! they were blythe, merry men.

From out the dome peered twinkling stars

Which shone on knights of boats and cars:

Within host Dunning’s spacious halls

The KING and ENSIGN graced the walls;

Beneath them ranged with D. O. WOOD

The BLACK PRINCE, LORNE and stalwart HOOD.

HOTRUM, STACKPOLE, SOMERVILLE,

And scouts who answered to “just plain BILL.”

Duke TERRY then inspects the guards

And straightway signals all his pards:

He trained his optics down the line,

Then to the chaplain gave a sign.

With smirk and quip the fray began,

Ye gods! they’re at it to a man.

The chef was new, his viands fine,

My word! how they did sup and dine.

Each clansman cracked his jest and pun,

Warm hearts, good cheer made all the fun.

With merry clink the MAC’S and O’S

Attacked until their WILD IRISH ROSE.

When MARSHALL diagnosed their case

And cried “Enough,” they slackened pace.

Just here the warblers oiled their throats,

Producing full BRAZILLIAN notes,

The smokers puffed and songs were sung,

A gem was that from RILEY YOUNG.

Will McIlroy and NANCY’S choir,

With JULES did stud sweet music’s lyre.

At half past ten the screen began

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To picture LARRY, HANK and DAN;

Why Scots had thews instead of fat

And differed from St. George and Pat.

Halt! Produce your Passport

Reuben acushla! I wish you saw

Dear BERTHA’S curves and WOLFE’S smooth jaw.

EDDIE was flashed de-HORNING a cow,

Alas, poor Yoric! view him now.

Admiral HARRY sailed to sea

With skippers primed in drams of Tea,

Hector BENNETTO—Benn. C.B.—

THORPE, FITZ—MORICE, Murdo Mac D—

SARGENT, THOMAS, Frank C. FOY

Roared with unction and rocked with joy

At JACK the Moor in the bear’s cage

And CALLAGHAN was all the rage.

The cartoons ceased in quite a breeze

With Cupid DICK in his B.V.D’s.

WILL. JACKSON, wise from Spotless Town,

Sate cheek by jowl with soldier BROWN,

While GRAY and GREEN and singing PINK

Rehearsed “The toothbrush in the sink.”

And “Young DICK TINNING haint no style,

Deed he am boss, all de while.”

RICHARD sang “Maxwellton’s Braes”

Performing as in other days.

Oh you beautiful doll was there

With bells on her toes, and lard in her hair.

The C.N.R. and G.T.P.

The CORNBELT Route and N. Y. C.

Hob-nobbed with he of the C. B. Q.

Beside the banks of the winding SOO.

MULKERN, entranced beheld the throng,

Impressed was he with the ’cello song.

Saintly McCRAW shed one large tear

O’er wee Baptiste on his truckle bier.

The joke on MURPHY was a scream

Beyond the Company’s fondest dream.

FALSTAFF sampled some nut-brown ale,

Requested a schooner and then a pail:

ANGUS TORY and WELLAND STRONG

Thought they too would ride along,

But ALEC. BOYD said “Have a heart,

Does ‘G. & W.’ take no part?”

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One of the Songsters

Charles L. Singer,
The affable and accommodating ticket agent, M.C.R., St. Thomas, Ont.

With pretense only, Jimmie S—

Pitched the tent of the Royal Mess,

At this the owls flew off their perch

To safety in a nearby church,

But the lion cubs drank LION brew,

Avoiding HENNESSY’S Mountain Dew,

Yet so discreet, no man did mar

By deep libations from the jar.

TIMOTHY—HEALEY and CARSON too,

Prayed that night in the self-same pew,

And harked to MULLIN’S vocal gem,

Which touched the crew from stern to stem.

Most of the men were born quite young,

And some before had never sung,

So you may guess the bars and chords

Issuing from that House of Lords.

Colonel NELLES and Major TIM,

True, bold Britons, were in the swim.

A “GLOOM” complained to JOLLY JACK

DONALDSON, FAIRHEAD—ANDREW MACK.

That Woolworth’s chiel was not a SCOT

And the good old days had gone to pot,

But HOWARD, HICKSON and Harvey Lloyd,

Wreathed in smiles the fun enjoyed.

By “Cobalt Special” SHERIDAN came.

Likewise a list too long to name:

COLLINS, FERNLEY, CALDWELL, GOULD,

With PERNFUSS sleek, massaged, bejeweled,

Like “two-year-olds” cut up old Nick

And introduced a brand new trick.

They hopped about from lid to lid,

And each did everything Katy-did.

The N. P. R. and PHOEBE SNOW

Both regretted they could’nt go.

Nobody threw the harpoon sharp,

Nobody prayed or played the harp,

But men of baggage, boats and cars,

In har-mon-ee smoked long cigars.

They lent their brilliance to the scene

And polished platters slick and clean.

After the sun had gone to rest,

When birds and beasts were all undressed,

The hours sped fast on wheels of time

And the flock took flight ere midnight chime,

Resolved to meet ’bout next July

To trap that badger fierce and sly,

Or cage the kangarooster.

86

The late A. J. Taylor and some of his intimate personal and business friends

Top row—The Late John Strachan, Erie Railroad, Toronto; H. G. McMicken, European Agent, G.N.R., London, Eng.; Wm. Askin, Auditor, Northern Navigation Co., Sarnia; The Late J. D. Hunter, Allan Line, Toronto.

Bottom row—J. J. Rose, G.A., U.P.R., Toronto; B. H. Bennett, G.A., C. & N.W.R., Toronto; P. G. Van Vleet, Publisher, Toronto; J. R. Steele, Freight Claims Auditor, C.P.R.; F. J. Glackmeyer, Sergeant-at-arms, Ontario Government; W. Smith, Inspector of Post Offices, Toronto; W. Jackson, President, Jackson Mfg. Co., G.T.A., C.P.R., Clinton, Ont.; W. H. Clancy, Ex-C.P. & T.A., G.T.R., Montreal, Que.

87

ANDREW J. TAYLOR
Lines to the memory of a good friend and business associate

If inscrutable destiny or the influence of circumstance had not planned for Andrew J. Taylor the career of a widely known railway man, it may be stated without relying on too elastic imagination that he could have qualified to an advance degree as a beloved Presbyteriann “dominie” or Catholic priest. His admirable character attracted unusual and unsolicited confidences, to human anxieties his sound sympathetic counsel applied the encouragement and comfort of a confessor and he was never without a loose shilling for the needy. Coupled with these attributes he possessed a moral and superior mental fabric and when you learn that his forebears came from a canny nook in Scotland it will explain and account for his quiet appreciation of honor and duty.

Lesmahagow or Abbey Green, on the River Nethan, Lanarkshire, was the birthplace of his father, James Mitchell Taylor, who brought his ruddy cheeked bride from the English-speaking settlement of L’Original to Ottawa. Her father succumbed to wounds received in the battle of the Wind Mill and both her military grandfathers were killed in the battle of Waterloo. In Bytown the subject of this sketch was born June 24th, 1858, and spent his childhood with four brothers and four sisters, securing his education in the private schools which predominated in those days and in the world of experience and travel.

As a boy he caused his mother more trouble than any of her other sons owing to the fact that he was always “Fighting the other fellows’ battles”, could not condone bullying and was the staunch friend and champion of a deaf and dumb playmate whom children chased and tantalized. He was fond of animals and during his life in Ottawa, mill slabs and water were delivered in the neighborhood of the river and often the horses drawing these necessities were neglected and ill treated. Invariable his gorge would rise at such treatment and he waded in causing no end of trouble.

As a boy Andy Taylor playing a hymn on the organ, selling ribbon over the counter in Elliott & Hamilton’s Ottawa store, or juggling with rolls of carpet in McIlwraith & Egan’s at Hamilton, would seem to those who knew him later, as an uncongenial occupation for the putter of the heavy shot and athletic participator in Caledonian games, but such was the case with him, and many another youth did likewise in their experimental quest for the right thing amid a variety of business pursuits.

When his father resigned the position of General Freight Agent of the St. Lawrence & Ottawa Railway he assumed charge of the passenger interests of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, and came to Toronto to represent that company—until his transfer to Pittsburg, creating in 1878 the permanent agency which was withdrawn only last December. A. J. Taylor entered his father’s employ as a clerk at Toronto in the spring of 1879, covered the territory as traveling passenger agent under his direction, succeeded him, became “C.F. & P.A.”, in 1900, and as a respected and trustworthy officer his name remained on that company’s pay roll continuously for thirty-six years.

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Although his agreeable disposition and the nature of his duties in early manhood, secured him throughout Ontario and Quebec an extensive acquaintance with which he was persona grata, Mr. Taylor did not eagerly seek new companionship and he clearly recognized the line of demarkation existing between personal and business friends. However, many men whom he met through the medium of commercial connections, soon became more intimate and it was only a “casual” or extra-sensitive person that misinterpreted a certain aloofness or transient preoccupation which some thought he appeared to sometimes display.

Prior to 1885, the year when the Canadian Pacific Railway threw open a new gateway to Winnipeg, Andy Taylor was one of a lively United States railroading coterie who sought a share of that growing and intensely competitive passenger business then moving only via St. Paul to the Dakotas and Canadian Northwest. He proved his worth, building a reputation which sustained him long after, thus gaining for his employers a percentage of traffic based on good-will towards “Andy” which the road would have otherwise been denied.

More or less dogmatic, and always deliberate, in argument he was convincing and his personal prestige and lucid exposition of routes, rates and accommodation ensured regular renewal of patronage from individual travelers and professional ticketing agents from Halifax to the Detroit River. When he was in his prime—genial, popular and as strong as a gladiator—he participated in many exciting episodes of personal character and incidents arising out of the unsettled conditions governing travel, ticket scalping, rate cutting and commissions on sales. He described to me how, on one occasion the “Wabash”, “C.B. & Q.R.”, “C. & N.W.R.” and “C.R.I. & P.” made an agreement lasting for a limited period, whereby they pooled their entire passenger business ticketed through Chicago, Omaha and westward, each receiving an equal monthly division irrespective of the percentage handled individually. While this understanding was extant his employers, the “C.M. & St. P.R.”, opened their line from Chicago to Council Bluffs, Nebraska, and requested admission to the charmed circle. The quartette black-balled the new candidate and he, through the medium of increased commissions broke the cabal and the status quo shot as high as a captive balloon with feverish excitement. In 1885 one Quebec agent received for commissions on passenger business from the incoming ships destined the west, a cheque for one month’s bookings amounting to $750.00.

Like the late Robert Lewis, long connected with the Lehigh Valley Railroad, who years ago fished in the wilds of Northern Muskoka and beyond, Andrew Taylor was a devoted follower of the sport of Isaac Walton. His regular journeys and explorations in the regions of fish and game were to him anticipated fixtures and the source of much pleasure and benefit. He visited many haunts in his time, was considered an authority on ways and means to fill a creel and color a “meerchaum”. Like Theodore Roosevelt, he “dee-lighted” to handle a gun and was better than the average as a wing shot.

Passionately fond of outdoor life, with him originated the plan for a permanent headquarters in the woods, and aided by his associates Messrs. B. H. Bennett, J. J. Rose, P. G. Van Vleet and Jack Goodsell, the well equipped lodge of the incorporated Red Chalk Fishing and Game Club, six miles south89 of Bigwin Island in Lake of Bays, was established in Northern Muskoka, with Andrew Taylor charter president, honorary life member and pater familias of a sociable brood of thirty sportsmen.

Having been an ex-president of the Victoria Lawn Bowling & Skating Club and the Western Bowling Association, London, his office was the rendezvous of curlers and bowling committees as well as fellow members of the Toronto Lacrosse & Athletic Club.

Few of his friends had more intimate opportunities to realize his characteristics than myself and one must labor beside a person to obtain the true perspective. The antithesis of what men describe as a “fourflusher”, he could not stoop to conquer by unfair means, but was punctilious in observing the code, in the propriety of personal behaviour, in the composition of a sentence. Although endowed with Scottish caution, in many ways he was not secretive but almost boyishly candid and uniformly courteous, patient and generous to a fault. The confidante of his father, the adviser to a score of relatives, idolized by his family, A. J. Taylor’s confreres valued his friendship and regarded their intimacy with him as a golden opportunity.

Half the membership of the Red Chalk Fishing and Game Club, Muskoka.

Central Quartette—

Reading from left to right from top centre of circle—

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 that91 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.

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BELLEVILLE’S CONTRIBUTION TO TRANSPORTATION
An exceptional record in this field of endeavor

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.

Sir William Mackenzie,

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 when96 Parry Sound rejoiced over its first railway connection with the outside—a 3.3 mile spur to a Canada Atlantic Railway junction.

Sir Donald Mann,

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.

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D. B. Hanna,

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.—

In rebuttal, the Government Bureau of Railway Statistics tabulates—

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.

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F. H. Phippen,

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.

❦ ❦ ❦

River Drivers on the Montreal River, Temiskaming, Northern Ontario.

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), to100 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.

Andrew C. Kellogg,

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 forest101 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 about102 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.

A Slump in Cobalt Lake. Former well known waterway now no more.

From Lorrain’s remote locality comes to Cobalt mines the compressed air and electric current generated with unique machinery from the waters103 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.

Jacob Lewis Englehart,
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.104 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 a105 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.

Over the Trail where the Railways are not

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 remaining106 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.

❦ ❦ ❦

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.

William P. Duperow,

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 assistance107 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.

108

W. J. MOFFATT

JOHN J. ROSE

109

Passport Photograph Collection loaned by

Read from left to right—

111

Passport Photograph Collection loaned by Messrs W. J. Moffatt and J. J. Rose.

Read from left to right—

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.

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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 demeanor114 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——, General115 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.

George Tootle

Disappointments and neck and neck finishes are frequent, but variety is the spice and fascinating magnet in railroading life and when shrewd manufacturers repudiate narrowness by distributing the plums among a number, “We116 fell on their necks with loud cries”, as handsome Jack McGuire of the “C.P.R.” would say. These incidents are reminiscent of a whiskey traveler who alleges he interviewed at Chicago the superintendent of dining cars for a well known railroad. To quote his own words “I paid proper attention to my personal appearance, wore my Persian lamb-skin coat and anticipated an order”. Contrary to expectations, however, the interview fell flat, no contract was made and for years after, this crestfallen liquor man went out of his way to divert his company’s shipments away from that line via other channels, to the discomfiture of railway men in no way responsible and notwithstanding the fact that the offending Dining Car Superintendent stoutly contended it was not his road but another that was unappreciative or stocked with rye. Speaking of the commissariat department, George Tootle, the widely known dining car waiter on the G.T.R.’s famous International Limited train, who thinks lunch counters breed nervousness and indigestion, relates observing at Chicago the following:—

A “hayseedy” looking man with field mice jumping out of his whiskers, walked up to the lunch counter, seated himself on a stool, placed his bright-colored carpet bag on the next stool and partook of a hearty lunch. He passed the young man a $1 bill to take out the price of his lunch, 50 cents, and was surprised when the youth said: “Not any change, sir; your carpet bag occupied a seat, and we must collect for that.”

The old man looked dazed for a second only, and then replied:

“All right, my boy”, and opening the bag, exclaimed, “Old carpet bag, I have paid for your lunch and you shall have it.”

Quicker than a flash he threw in a mince pie, a plate of doughnuts and several sandwiches, and departed amid the shouts of everyone in the station.

One does not mind unintentionally stumbling on a hasty eruption in temper of a decent chap who has just found five of his letters opened by intent or on the part of a careless firm with a similar name, but we would rather not be granted an audience with an apple exporter who fathers four hundred barrels of fruit lying on the dock at Halifax ready for a ship’s hold at the psychological moment when an inspector condemns the lot because the centres are filled with undersized apples.

Tenacity of purpose and “Never say die”—which compel results—are well exemplified by a happening that came to my notice some years ago, involving two cars of shoes which were routed and definitely promised to one117 trans-continental line. A rival corporation sent a city solicitor after them without securing the footwear. The city freight agent then essayed the task with like success. Undaunted the “D.F.A.” was the next to try, but the shipper remaining firm stuck to his guns when the fourth application was made in the person of the freight traffic manager. The news spread and on Wednesday evening of that week, when the gentleman who shewed such valor in defending his citadel of shoe leather, to the accompaniment of the silent prayers of the party of the first part, called at the president’s residence to visit his daughter, the denouement hung fire no longer. A word, under such circumstances from the high official proved sufficient and the loser then understood the quotation, “An idol but with feet of clay.”

An active traveling agent and irresistible business getter told me once of a prominent London firm promising him a carload if he would remain absent for six months, of another who suggested “Sell some goods for us and we will favor your route,” while the third—an old ‘Q’ employee who claimed the ‘Q’ was a large family—looking at his watch, said “Wait twenty minutes.” Waiting twenty minutes is a nerve-racking ordeal that also affects a gentleman’s prestige and a better method of procedure would be to pre-arrange a meeting out of deference to the demands on busy people’s time. It is awkward, after traveling some distance for the purpose, to find on meeting the member of Messrs. Frett & Growl Limited, that he will not meet your eye, will not shew signs of animation, but with head down apparently saving his breath for a long distance race, terminates the interview in melancholy with “No!”

There was a traffic official in an eastern metropolis some years ago, representing a fine railroad but kept in the chair by other people’s financial power, who was notorious for that stealthy, furtive habit of fumbling with his papers without looking up, as though fearful his eyes would convict him of his sins against men.

In the category of queer ones could be listed the eccentric who accosted a friend of mine, now doing trustworthy executive work for the government railways, with “What, you here again?”

“Just for three minutes, Sir, to place a routing order!” “You won’t be here a minute, I’m too busy. I can’t be bothered by you and your routing order; it isn’t worth the paper it is written on.” With people like this unmuzzled and at large, can you wonder at the increase in crime.

Another good acquaintance who was invited to an inner office to unburden his mind and concisely recited the nature of his business without molestation, was dumbfounded when finished to observe the creature before him, without parley, touch a buzzer, summon a servitor and request him to “Shew this gentleman out.” What would you rather do than live with him? Some men’s physical boundaries and narrow-minded outlook are so small and contemptible that if a mosquito laid out a nine hole golf course on their torso he would be crowded for room.

A decade or so ago there dwelt in a town an hour’s ride east of Toronto, an individual like a ruffled grouse who thought to slay his interviewer118 summarily with “What you tell me goes in one ear and out the other,” as he made a personally conducted tour to the door. Quickly came the retort courteous: “I am not surprised Mr. —— there is nothing there to stop it.”

Now comes that robust type that would probably not wince when getting it back in kind if his antagonist could fittingly measure up to his standard in words and deeds. Picture the horned and forbidding monster, swollen with pride of place, who greets the caller as though he were going to swallow him whole and allow his gastric juice to do the rest: “Well, your company has one H— of a nerve to send you out here asking me for business: you built a station, some big contracts were let, but you were all looking out of the window when I wanted a slice,” finishing with a coup de grace, “What have you got to say about that?” His caller replied, “I guess our management took a leaf out of your book; how much of your business have we handled in the past ten years, tell me that? We learn to know who our friends are and when we have some favors to place we don’t hurry with them on a platter to the people who forget our route, but try to remember those who realize that if we are lucky we run a train or two about once a week out west.” The lengths to which some folks will go to make personal a neutral issue is astonishing. A man who had been employed in Chicago by a firm that could not prevail on the “C. & A.” to give them an order, came to Canada to work for an Ontario industry and expressed his intention to gratify that grudge by witholding shipments of the new employer from the railway he had placed under the ban.

The book of boors will admit of one more entry, being a letter I have permission to reproduce, which was addressed to one snob by a conscientious and sensitive young agent who has since transferred his energies to another channel.

form the subject of this communication and are exactly the text and sense of part of two conversations which occurred between you and myself—involuntarily on my part—and only because I was acting on orders while in the capacity of an employee of a “U.S.A.” railway seeking a share of the routing of the freight traffic you purchased in the United States or shipped westward, and which, unfortunately, you controlled.

No longer situated where behavior and language like yours has opportunity to grievously test the patience of myself, (and several others), permit me to allude to the impression you create.

When people of your calibre, quite devoid of consideration and finesse, receive a business proposition with a verbal attack couched in the tone and vernacular of your moulding shop, they are, no doubt, running119 true to form, but they take refuge behind the assumption that there is no one to question their attitude.

In doing so they indulge in a cowardly advantage over gentlemen who, by the nature of their employment, from president down, always have to remember the officials higher up; remember also, that in giving free rein to their human resentment, they may be rewarded with a letter of complaint, half true and half garbled, sent in by some cad to an officer disloyal enough to first believe the outsider.

Reflect on how disconcerted your son might feel were he to experience the misfortune of meeting a sour tempered individual like yourself when first coming in contact with the commercial public. He could not do himself justice nor serve you well.

The proverb says “One cannot make a silken purse out of a sow’s ear,” and although it is difficult to rebuild what the man in the street characterizes as a “rough neck,” it is never too late to mend.

The isolated class referred to are known by representatives of all businesses and are tacitly ostracized when the army of decent fellows is being discussed.

“Please heed the handwriting on the wall”

That man was “misfit” who should have been polishing apples for a Greek—to quote Jack Rose, an original wit.

After bidding adieu to the friendly personage who has accepted a mild cigar, but uncontented, megaphones to a couple of others at the rear in this wise, “Here Jake and Eddie, get in on the cigars,” our conversation in the “smoker” again reverted to pianos and things harmonious and cheerful. Genial M. T. Case recounted how fire, while in transit, ruined a carload of pianos when en route the west and the firm’s western manager, a believer in long odds, filed a claim for reimbursement, itemizing the instruments at $500 each. When the railway company received the billet doux they blinked and may have said “For the love of Mike” or something less classical and affectionate. However, as soon as the firms attention was drawn to the amount of the claim the manager, with good judgment, clipped $200 off each piano and a prompt settlement was arranged.

Only a few months ago an organized band of box car and freight shed thieves stole nine pianos and four phonographs from one railway company in a large city, and to date six had been recovered. Claims arising from damage, delay, theft, loss and wrecks are traffic men’s enemies that play the mischief and filter through all departments to the chief legal authorities. Of late years the railway companies have been stimulated to eternal vigilance in order to combat daring robbers with confederate organization quite far reaching and involving from twenty to forty people within the ranks of employees and outside. Such a gang is said to have stolen from one company in four months goods valued at $35,000, comprising candy, cameras, sugar, liquors, musical instruments and clothing. The investigation departments have recovered from beneath hay stacks not far from Toronto, Canada, for120 instance, forty suits of underwear and a dozen pairs of ladies high suede boots. Imagine the temerity of the men making off with twenty head of sheep from under the eyes of yardmen and special officers. The public press not long ago chronicled details of the loss of fifteen sacks of flour from one car en route Buffalo to Belleville. Whiskey is an outstanding temptation and many a headache that starts rolling fails to join the soda waiting at the other end. Out of a thirty case consignment from further west, making the one night journey from St. Thomas to Black Rock, there checked fifteen cases missing, lock, stock and barrel—the wood only of four cases remained and eleven cases were intact. Unmerited onus for losses is now and then thought to rest with the railroads which enquiry does not substantiate. A well known firm in the congested wholesale zone of a neighboring city engaged a detective who pussy-footed about the premises for a year without locating a leak. This human bloodhound may have had a cold in his head and was a poor scenter as it was developed later that the shortages were manipulated as a side line by a vinegar mill shipper who got away with also $6,000 of the hardened cider—mostly recovered—and had been supplying a small pickle factory through the medium of a carter who drove up daily for kegs.

Railway companies very seldom pilfer, but the action of more than one railroad on this continent in appropriating urgently needed steam coal billed to others during the winters of 1917–18, will prepare the reader’s viewpoint for a claim for reimbursement placed in the hands of the Silverplate Road, covering fifty cars of slack coal, lost and being vigorously traced, which that line had seized and hastily dumped into a big washout cavity.

Whitewashing coal would seem to be a labor as unheard of as washing the spots off the leopard, yet, says the Saturday Evening Post, that apparently crazy scheme is carried out by some western railroads. The coal is whitewashed, not for aesthetic reasons, but simply to prevent theft in transit. Before a car of coal starts on its journey the top layers are sprayed with limewater, which leaves a white coating on each lump of black coal after the water evaporates. The removal of even a small quantity from that whitewashed layer is immediately detected, so that the exact junction or station at which the theft occurred can be noticed.

Once upon a time when many boys were investigating the fallacy of the supposed transformation of a black horse hair into a snake after nine days sojourn in the rain barrel, a loaded oil tank car was glued to the rails in Detroit yards, but urgently needed on the other side of the international boundary. Giving a clear receipt, a connecting line hooked on to it, but almost immediately finding the tank in a leaking condition because the discharge pipe had been snapped in a rough shunt, they shot it back to the original carriers. The latter were on guard and refused it, the tank in the meantime losing 200 gallons of oil. To aggravate matters, a third railway whose office was to deliver the shipment, looked askance at the “cripple” and thus both exits were closed. Despite the pleadings of the consignees for the oil, the middle line holding the “white elephant” turned to them a deaf ear until a settlement would be made.121 After much fencing and correspondence an adjustment on a mileage basis was arrived at. The road accepting the “bad order” tank was held liable for a proportion gauged by a thirty mile haul, and the comparatively innocent delivering company, being ten miles longer, drew a debit of $4,000.

The interpretation of a maze of tariff rates and a thousand lights and shadows affecting their application, as well as classification, deadlocks regarding analogous goods perplex and keep bright the wits of railway people, that the responsibility may be placed where it should rest. To elucidate this remark let me refer in passing, to a partly demented and very undependable dealer in a commodity that was barrelled—long since gone to his reward—who requested and obtained a quotation on a specific shipment of twenty cars, each to contain a stated number of barrels, which were to be of agreed size and weight. He then had made a larger barrel, forwarded the product in them and, of course, when weighed a heavy undercharge claim developed, the carriers holding the short end.

Different from this was the experience of a car of eastbound California oranges traveling via the gorges and canyons of a Rocky Mountain railway. A broken axle precipitated trouble in the middle of the train which threw the “cripple” out of alignment and in shorter time than is consumed in relating it, the down-grade impetus and pressure wrenched it free throwing the disabled car clear. It fell to the bottom of the gorge, the automatic couplers linked the drawheads of the separated halves of the train and no one was wiser until the following springtime freshets uncovered the debris at the base of a cliff, clearing up a mystery for the checkers and claim department.

Sparks from passing locomotives do widespread damage to crops and fencing and a battalion of agents are continually engrossed with personal injury matters and destruction of stock. A car of expensive western steers was recently heading eastward to the seaboard when early in the morning prairie grass in the racks of troughs igniting from sparks started a blaze. Being under way, the crew did not detect the trouble at once but, on learning the danger, they raced to the water tank at Ingersoll. Before the water was reached a draw bar pulled out and broke setting the emergency brakes hard, jolting the train to a sudden stop. Fifteen head of the cattle were found roasted to death and three jumped from the car and ran amuck crazed with blisters and the intense heat. Railroading is not all profit. Some days you cannot lay up a cent. The following true story is apropos:—

“How many cows have you now?” inquired the visitor.

“Eight,” replied Farmer Corntossel, discontentedly; “all comin’ home reg’lar every night to make work for somebody.”

“I understand two of your neighbor’s cows got hit by railway trains last week.”

“Yep. An’ he got cash fur ’em, too. I don’t see how that feller trains his cattle not to shy at a locomotive.”—Washington Star.

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When the public magnifies the cash returns from ticket sales and freight traffic it has not an accurate conception of the immense sums paid out annually by the railway companies for the adjustment of even small claims. Traffic Manager Adam Scott of the F. W. Woolworth Company, with eighty-five stores in Canada, was instrumental in having authorized during the past fiscal year $16,000 in vouchers issued to write off small claims on less than carload shipments of glassware and crockery. This firm controls nine hundred and ninety-eight stores in America and the sums involved in this phase of profit and loss must be immense.

On one occasion the Great Northern Railway wrote the Heinz Pickle Company, Leamington, Ont., regarding the collection of an undercharge amounting to $40.09, which arose from an error in prepaying the freight charges on a carload shipped to Vancouver, B.C. The Pickle Company’s Traffic Manager, at Pittsburg, Pa., working in accordance with the Inter-state Commerce Act Rules, promptly acknowledged the liability in an elaborate statement, with cheque, assuring the railway company that the correct amount of the discrepancy was, on further investigation, found to be $80.45. In other days we all knew some people who would have gasped at such an evidence of gratuitous fair dealing, but to quote from William Shakespeare, the listener would be fit for “treason, stratagem and spoils” whose risibilities are not tickled with a recital of the claim of a cautious old sexton, made on the Canadian Northern Railway at Winnipeg for two funeral tollings at $2 each which he would have received had the railway delivered the expected church bell in time. And so the old world and the amusing people on it, with their pleasantries and foibles, roll across the stage of every-day existence.

“We must encourage the young,” said a former acquaintance of your father—a benevolent old benedict—who cheerfully swung into line with the friends wishing to mark your approaching marriage and who would honor you with more than the sentiments expressed herein.

The matrimonial contract of that railroading knight is nearing completion; yours is about to be undertaken with ideals, hope and resolve. Undoubtedly the trail will develop many joys and some kinks in the path, but we are convinced that you can measure up to the best traditions of the lords of creation. Those who have basked in the rays of your genial personality prophecy you will prove docile “In bond” and all of us will “Watch your smoke.”

You spring from sturdy stock, long identified with railway construction in Canada, and since those other days in the loft of Hamilton’s smoke smeared freight shed, down the avenue of occupations in your native city, abroad in Western Ontario and throughout the business zone of Toronto, few dare question your reputation for urbanity, commercial sense and thoroughness. Where master and man wrest for silver fortunes in Cobalt Camp, they say your methods and diplomatic behavior were “as smooth as a kitten’s wrist” and a decided asset to the Grand Trunk Railway.

As a reminder of your bachelor days and associations: as a token of regard when nearing the threshold of a momentous event in your life, accept from subscribing friends whose names are attached hereto, the accompanying gift of dining room furniture—a contribution towards your household gods.

To the estimable lady who is to become Mrs. Nelson, please convey our profound respect; we presume her journey from Brockville to Hamilton will be a personally conducted tour. You both have our earnest and best wishes for a happy future.

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HAMILTON, A HOTHOUSE FOR TRANSPORTATION MEN
Her numerous railway and navigation sons abroad

E. Alexander
Secretary, Can. Pac. Railway Montreal, Que.

The Timid Traveler.

When they found the old gentleman towards sundown, he had wandered to the yard limits and was seated in a free reclining chair car waiting for a hair cut. On hearing the doctor’s diagnosis: “Reason undermined,” he was assisted to an ambulance, as a hoot owl settled on the bridge at midnight, and a yellow fog enveloped the sleeping city.

❦ ❦ ❦

A DESERVED REBUKE

Speaking of “Back talk” at a railwaymen’s dinner, President Howard Elliott of the New Haven Lines, expressed sympathy for an employee temporarily under unbearable conditions and explained that when the conductor was punching tickets a man said to him, with a nasty sneer—“You have a lot of wrecks on this road, don’t you?” “Oh no,” said the conductor, “You’re the first I’ve seen for some time”.

Philadelphia Bulletin

❦ ❦ ❦

ONCE WAS ENOUGH

A sweet young thing who had not traveled much, was riding on a high speed interurban trolley noted for its accidents.

“How deliciously dangerous”, she was thinking as the conductor approached. “How often do you kill a person on this road?” she enquired. The ticket collector smiled and as he pocketed her coupon he said, “Just once, Miss”.

Electric Service Magazine

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THE TRANSPORTATION CLUB OF TORONTO

Although the members of this Club carefully safeguard their Death Benefit Fund and derive profit from periodical addresses delivered to them by qualified speakers on topics of specific or general interest, they have realized that all work with trains or traffic affairs and no play, is an unwise plan of campaign. Until war time exigencies discouraged the practice, the Transportation Club indulged in an Annual June outing.

Some incidents—not posed for—photographed at Jackson’s Point Picnic.

“Let go the balloon and come to earth you crimson-thatched, wind-jamming bush ranger,” called Tommy Nelson, president of the Brantford Green Socks, from the convention hall vestibule to discursive Claudius O’Toole, manager of the Ottawas, and the centre of a group following on the flight of steps above.

“Heraus mit him!” vamoose with that lingo you ivory-crested Fenian, we’ll shoot your team in the air like puffed rice from a Quaker Oats gun,” was the manager’s quick rejoinder, as he lighted a fragrant panatela.

“You’ll think you are playing in a vat of molasses when our merry men begin to stampede your bronchos,” continued Mr. Nelson, winking at Duff Adams and Will Lahey to the accompaniment of covert snickers from the near by delegates dispersing after the session.

AT THE BALL GAME

The members and guests in the circular group ardently participated.

“Ho! Ho! merry men and molasses is it? We’ll feed them the syrup to sweeten their tempers after the Redskins scalp their cow-licks and curly-me-Q’s,” the Ottawas’ chief exclaimed.

“Your bunch of pretenders would grade about Tenth in the Western Classification and that’s the tariff rating the railways give sand, bricks and other heavy, commodities” answered the director of the Green Sox.

“Believe me, President you have a raft of flotsom and jetsom as variegated as a hedge of Sweet William; a flock of tortoises I call them,” responded the ladylike O’Toole, appropriating the last word.

However, “Opinion is private property which the law cannot seize,” the old saw says.

As with all other mortals of divers pursuits, these ball tossers can stand just so much baiting and then they bristle like an old cock when young chantecler invades his yard reaching for high C. With plenty of such good natured130 badinage and the dissemination of unlimited sunshine, the owners and managers of the clubs composing the Inter-lake League finished the early spring meeting convened to arrange the games schedule for the current season, making due allowance for national holidays and discussing railway fares with ticket agents Jack Campbell, Albert Craig and J. B. Doran. This league comprised the Brantford Green Socks, Knotty Lee’s Hamilton Bengal Tigers, Saints of St. Thomas, home town of Bob. Emslie, National League umpire, and Gladstone Graney with Lajoie’s Cleveland “Naps”; also the Cockneys of London, where Pittsburg Pirate George Gibson dwells neighborly beside the railway triumvirate Messrs. Ernie Ruse, Harry MacCallum and Hubert Hays, with Ottawas of Ottawa and Peterborough Blue Jays completing the roster. The rivalry and fortunes of the bustling sextette, as will later be seen, ebbed and flowed between Brantford, the hub of two thirds of the circuit, presided over by president Silent Thomas Nelson, C.P.A., G.T.R., nick-named the “Sphinx” for his wisdom and ability to guard a secret deal, as far east as Ottawa on the big river where Claudius O’Toole had cajoled and berated his henchmen into winning the bunting the season before.

When the present Mr. O’Toole was yet a squalling infant the suffering, patient sponsors saw to it that his name was set down in the vestry register as “Claudius” with the saint’s name Dominick added, but the creepy nickname “Spider” automatically clung to “Claude” like the monkey man to the neck of the famous Sinbad the sailor who figured in Arabian Nights. The youth grew rangy, with long shifty legs, and his arms, ornamented with grapplers, seemingly as numerous and resourceful as the tentacles of a cuttle fish, were the wonder and pride of the freshmen at St. Augustine’s Seminary who doted on his prowess and perennial good nature.

At all times an awed respecter of Irish tradition, Spider O’Toole reverenced St. Patrick’s memory in full measure, and like that venerable sainted man, could not tolerate anything that wriggled: and who could blame him. The word “cringe” was not in his encyclopaedia and as he never “crawled” himself, he abhorred spiders and snakes as the devil scowls on piety. With him they were as popular as a horse thief in Utah. His dislike for cobras, constrictors, rattlers and all that ilk that do the hesitation glide without legs, was no spasmodic, abnormal antipathy, mark you, born of flirtations with the grape when purple, for he had never been known to arrive at a condition superinduced by an over-indulgence in the bottled and popular elements of conviviality. Always a man of nerve and aggressiveness, he shunned those toy cameras and fake electric pocket flashes, concealing jumping adders as he would the wails of the family Banshee, while buggy whips and garden hose lying about in the gloaming were sure to send shivers gamboling up and down his spinal network. Naturalists tell us the sagacious elephant, big as he is, will promptly side-step a lizard—and why not?

One rainy evening after the teams of the Inter-lake League had rid themselves of Charley-horse, glass arms and proud flesh, and were schooled and whipped into tolerable fettle for the ordeal of endurance and dexterity, with131 the opening day a short week off, Thomas Nelson, President of the Green Sox, met Spider O’Toole with others of the clan in the Algonquin Hotel rotunda. With them were Francis Nelson, Sporting Editor of the Globe, Dick Kearns, Fitzgerald and Charlie Good, and near by in the billiard room Harry Thorley and Billy Hamilton were making some fancy shots with a party they were booking to Europe, via the L.V.R. and White Star Line. Said Thomas quite carelessly, to Claudius, as he shifted the position of an undiscernable portion of Piper Heidseick from one cheek to the other, “We think we have better than an even break with the Ottawas on dates for the season’s schedule Mr. O’Toole: in other words, my Christian friend, I have the edge on you.”

Oh, have you Mr. Sphinx—well don’t strain your diaphragm gloating over that paper advantage: I’ll dull your edge so badly that you will have your spavined free lances at the horse shoers in a month, I will, so I will and I’ll leave it to your friend Ira Thomas, Mitch. Thomas or St. Thomas.

“I trow not, Spider. We have gathered in the net as fine a cluster of brilliants as ever crossed the Giant’s Causeway since the days the Gauls hung to the branches with their tails. I hope Connie Mack is unaware of their speed.”

“Mr. McGillicudy is still a young man: too bad to have him choke to death with laughter and he in his prime,” commented Claudius O’Toole.

“The Green Stockings are a lot of limber base ball professors, bright as patent stove polish, and when your kindergarten is introduced to their science.”

At this juncture, Will. Connell and Harry Watkins with the “Great Northern”, who had just come in from the theatre after enjoying Dick Sheridan’s “School for Scandal”, naively enquired if Mr. O’Toole’s redskins would win their opening game with the Peterborough Bluejays a week hence, adding “The birds are touted tough as hickory and hard nuts to crack”.

“We’ll crack their kernels as sure as Hades is a man trap,” said the Spider, “or make them work so hard they’ll ferment and blow their heads off.”

“As a precaution, have your willie pink collegians remove their hobble skirts,” chimed in Tom the Sphinx, with a significant smile.

“If the Bluejays loom such a menace to our aspirations, gentlemen,” retorted O’Toole, with a twinkle in his eye, “my humorous contemporary of the Brantford Green Legs had better buy nine shrouds now and fix a date for the wake.”

“Too much levity Spider, too much levity: ‘a sooty chimney spoileth many a beefsteak’. Do be advised” continued Nelson, childlike and bland. “The Green Sox team has one batter who is a potential phenomenon. On a clear day he can propel the sphere across the lagoon to the Cape Verde Islands and make it sizzle so that the natives think it is a Jack Johnson or a sputtering meteor from Mars.”

This was intended to spike the mortar of the rangy collegian but it didn’t.

“See here, Mr. President, be careful that no one hangs crepe on your nose or the public will get on to the fact that your brain is dead”, was the response.

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“I’ll bet Senator, the Irishmen will stitch up your savages so neatly they will be about as effective as a camera fiend in a London fog.”

“If that strain is put on us,” cried O’Toole, “I’ll ride a slippery log over the Chaudiere Dam at Ottawa and you can be there to see from the bridge north of the Chateau Laurier.” And he wished later there was bark on that log.

Some one said “Would you indulge in a mild libation if properly approached?” and a wag you all know said “We do not know you well enough to refuse you, is the gentleman with the ‘still’ exclusive?”

“So exclusive, my boy,” was the reply, “that you have to be both a True Blue and a Knight of Columbus to gain an entree”, and with that their voices died away in the distance.

Tim Mullins, Mel. Thomson and Jim Edwards of the G.T.R., who came up from Ottawa said at dinner the day Peterborough and Ottawa clashed that Spider O’Toole refused spaghetti because it squirmed and slid off his fork like the tempter in the Garden of Eden and he finished the meal without ridding himself of a half-defined presentment of evil. It beats the Dutch what odd little whims and superstitious notions some of those base ball players cherish and permit to influence their daily actions and fortunes.

Try to develop on the film of your memory the picture of a moderately expansive diamond and outfield, the grass exceptionally abundant on account of the adjacent moisture and the entire enclosure surrounded by the shapely maple and a variety of other trees adorned with vivid spring foliage. Include in the perspective the hurrying, foamy waters of the serpentine Otonabee River flanking the parkside before spreading wide to the harbor beyond and you glimpse the arena where Claudius O’Toole lost his first game to the merciless Bluejays and likewise his wager.

These were the home grounds of the Peterborough Bluejays, and the players located on the chessboard as strategetically as might be, were there “with the lard in their hair,” eager to circumvent the Ottawa nine and provide an interesting premiere that afternoon for their supporters who buzzed with expectancy and speculation, tier over tier, as the early innings progressed.

Jim Skinner and E. T. Carr encouraged the Jays, and in the telegraph cupola where Tony Webster was at the key, sat Jimmie Anderson, Jack Tinning and John Melville, hoping to ticket the players to Western Ontario.

Considerable betting and some odds had been laid here and there on the result among the fans and normal local adherents, and in several outside quarters anticipation was keen, but down in the reeds and stone piles beside the rushing eddies, where a large water snake and his partner were basking with several smaller amphibious creatures in the sunshine, nothing was known of all this. The pair in sable and bronze habiliments, displaying the activity and boldness peculiar to the breed in mating season and their need of food after long hibernation, were fearlessly foraging beside the sedge at the river’s edge, and woe betide the luckless chub in the shallows or lazy frog on shore caught napping. The ball ground outfield ran down close to the river, terminating133 at a high fence, and was uniform and level save for a few depressions in the black loam where was once a swamp. Owing to the dampness and shade the grass refused to grow hereabouts. The game progressed with tantalizing uncertainty until the pivotal seventh innings, the advantage resting first with the Bluejays and then with the Redskins. At this point the Ottawas gained the ascendancy with a batting rally and Spider O’Toole, who played deep centre field, worked closer in stimulating his men with “Ginger up Germany, to the youth at second—you can’t coax a living from the public on that form.” And again, to the young spitball pitcher, “Steady Slim, nice work lad, take your time, you have them coming and going as easy as pulling on an old glove.”

At the conclusion of the eighth inning the score stood 4-4 and the Spider’s braves in their half of the ninth chalked up but one more circuit as the Bluejays, though nervous did not crack and were making no costly errors. The stands began to rumble as the home players went to bat for the last time, a boy clinging to an over-hanging branch called “Oh Mr. O’Toole, we’ll make you take your gruel” and the palpable excitement of some of the ladies who were on their feet, caused otherwise sober spectators to turn the meeting into temporary pandemonium with waving arms, hats and vocal extravagances. M. J. Baker and his friend Jamieson, came with the saints, and the stentorian tones of Stanton A. Baker, representing the “Great Western”, calling the plays to Tommie Gormally and Harvey Hagerman over at Oshawa, could be plainly heard above the din.

In the midst of the uproar Eddie D—— and his acquaintance O. G. C. Willard, faultlessly attired, when passing the grand stand, and thus perchance unconsciously giving the ladies a treat, overheard an Old Country friend with John Ransford exclaim,

“Aw, my word, this is a strange game!”

“How so strange?” queried John.

“The players seem to have an unlimited license to indulge in personalities, don’t you know—hear how they ‘rat’ each other!”

“They don’t mean it, those boys are milk-fed, college-bred, and the salt of the earth”, explained the sage from Clinton.

“My Eye, observe the pitcher and catcher are even now conspiring to beat the batter”, continued the newcomer.

“Oh, that is only camouflage to deceive the enemy,” replied his host. The visitor’s marked impartiality towards the stubborn progress of the contending teams recalls the attitude of the lady whose husband was in mortal combat with a grizzly bear, exclaiming, “I never saw a fight I cared so little about who won”.

As was prognosticated, the heavy hitter to Cape Verde Islands arose to the occasion and smacked a fair one on the nose to left which the fielder fumbled. He lead off a dozen feet and made second with a hook slide when a foul tip clipped the catchers’ finger and the ball rolled to the screen. The tension increased. From where he stood, legs apart and watchful, O’Toole stormed and upbraided at the top of his voice, swearing by the web-footed, bald-headed134 Siamese twins, while the pitcher and backstop conferred. The umpire’s indicator shewed two men on bases and no one out when the third birdman stepped over to the plate and stood motionless as Sejanus on his horse. His plan or the captain’s orders counseled a waiting policy, and such patience was repaid with four balls, earning first base, forcing his mates and filling the bags. Whoops and yells tore jagged holes in the atmosphere, and even momentarily disconcerted the fourth and last friendly batter. “Slim” threw him a swift ball at which he swung to no purpose, and it lodged with a resounding plop in the cavity of the catcher’s mitt. Again the man on the mound moistened the now soiled horsehide and repeated the performance, but the strain was terrific and his features registered it plainly. The next one was low and wide. Once more he threw, transmitting decided curve to the sphere, but it lacked sustained velocity and slowed down in progress. The waiting batter saw his opportunity, breathed a fervent “Welcome Mr. Spalding” and received it squarely. The ball sailed over the pitcher’s head and past the shortstop’s clutching digits just at the instant Spider O’Toole was vociferating “Oh, you son of a snail”. This compliment to the exhausted “Slim” smothered in his mouth as he realized the sphere was heading to his territory. True to instinct, his tentacular mechanism sprang alert and making a sanguine, mighty vault his fingers just touched the ball, the contact and a puff of wind diverting its course and down it came behind him not far off. The dirty ball ceased rolling two yards away, resting in one of those shady, somewhat deep hollows in the black loam close to the river bank and fence. Alive to the crucial situation quivering at half cock on the diamond and savagely intent on thwarting the runners as well as to maintain his lead, the Spider spun round in a flash of time and half blindly leaping on the dirty horsehide stumbled, falling at full length face down as his hand closed over the coveted ball.

O ye hooting witches of the midnight orgy and screeching jagaurs squirming in the fatal coils of Columbian pythons, never was there such a scream and succession of fearful cries emitted as arose from the prostrate player rolling over and over before the multitude in an agonized struggle to right himself. The approaching bay of a hungry winter wolf pack in full tongue is unequalled as a shudder producer and fearful indeed, our ancestors say, were the howls of redskins bent on massacre. The field and stand had never listened to these, but they heard Spider O’Toole and were transfixed with thrills in speechless anticipation. Wild eyed and sweating they found him, the grimey ball still in his grasp and two water snakes wound about his wrist and forearm with ugly heads and forked tongues shooting this way and that as their bodies writhed and rubbed his bare skin in efforts to free themselves from his powerful clutch, poor O’Toole dancing in near convulsions, meanwhile beseeching the rescuers to free him from the loathsome girdle. It would appear that the reptiles had come out of the water, as they sometimes do, and after the manner of their kind, curled up together and gone to sleep in one of the swampy depressions close to the fence bounding extreme centre field, and this was the handful the fingers of Claudius O’Toole closed on. The shortstop and fielder who first reached their horrified leader state sub rosa that he was muttering pieces135 of prayers, swearing on the bones of King Kelly, and vowing by Ptolemy’s ancient mummies that he would nail those flying runners at the plate. In his wanderings he was heard to mention “Log over the Chaudiere”, “See their flat, evil heads” and “St. Patrick to the rescue”.

Thomas J. Nelson,

City Passenger and Ticket Agent, G.T.R., Brantford, Ont.; former President, Brantford Baseball Club.

When the commotion subsided and the contented Peterboroughese were discussing the absorbing topic on their way home, Mister O’Toole disrobed in the dressing room and while introducing his friends Gerald O’Flaherty and Jimmie Goodall to Mr. Nelson, declared by all the hairy chested “oorang ootangs” in the Zambesi Country that he would in future manage his team from the bench when they clashed with the Bluejays at home. Therefore you may not view Spider O’Toole in action again beside the winding Otonabee River, but sooner or later, he will emulate a spike-heeled river driver with peavie in hand, riding a pine log over the Chaudiere in order that a pound of flesh may be delivered to Silent Tom Nelson, President of the Brantford Green Sox.

VIEW OF THE FIRST AMERICAN RAILWAY TRAIN

A HAPHAZARD CHRONOLOGY

TOO MUCH NERVE TONIC

Timid Party—“This train seems to be traveling at a fearful pace Ma’am! I feel nervous.”

Stolid elderly female—“Yus—aint it? My Bill’s a-drivin’ of the ingin’ an’ ’e can make her go when ’e’s got a drop o’ drink in ’im.—Tit Bits”

Scene on the Anticosti Railway

142

HANDY ANDY

“Can you run an engine,” said the yardmaster to Martin Maguire?

“Can I run an engine,” sniffed the bold Hibernian; “there’s nothing I’d rather do than run a lokeymootive all day long. Huh! Can Oi run an engine?”

“Suppose you run that engine into the round house,” suggested his boss.

Bluffing Martin climbed into the cabin with his orders in his mind, looked the ground over, spat on his hands, grabbed the largest handle and gave it a mighty yank. Zip! away went the engine into the roundhouse. Guessing the trouble ahead he reversed the lever clear back. Out she went—in she went—and out again.

Then the chief yelled, “I thought you said you could run an engine?”

And Martin Maguire quickly replied, “Oi had her in three times, why didn’t you shut the door?”

The frontispiece photograph of passenger train is an early edition of the Empire State Express, by courtesy of the N.Y.C. & H.R.R.

The Frontispiece lettering was executed by Harry Moyer, cartoonist of Toronto Daily Star.

The Frontispiece conductor is Mr. D. J. Carson, former Chairman of the Brotherhood of Railway Conductors, Toronto, a popular vocalist who is widely known by patronizers of C.P.R. trains running between Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario.

The pen and ink decoration for “Navigators of the Blue” is the work of Miss Alberta L. Tory, daughter of Mr. Alfred Tory, Storekeeper, Grand Trunk Railway, London, Ont.

The half-tone engravings used in this book, with a few exceptions, were made by the British & Colonial Press, Limited, Toronto, Ont.

146

YOU EAT A
CHRISTIE
BISCUIT

YOU EAT
THE BEST

CHRISTIE, BROWN & CO.,
LIMITED

147

THE QUEEN’S HOTEL
TORONTO, ONT.

400 ROOMS

120 of them en suite with bath; long distance telephone in every room; elegantly furnished throughout; cuisine and service of the highest order of excellence. Pleasantly situated near the lake and beautifully shaded; it is cool, quiet and homelike.

American and European Plans

M^cGAW & WINNETT, Proprietors

148

The High Class Hotel with
Moderate Rates

HOTEL BRESLIN

Broadway at 29th Street
NEW YORK

The New York Home
for Canadians

THE ONLY OPEN AIR CAFE
IN THE CITY

Restaurant Prices Most Moderate

149

THE
DOMINION
BANK
ESTABLISHED 1871

Head Office   -   Toronto

Traveller’s Cheques and Letters
of Credit Issued at Favorable
Rates

C. A. BOGERT, General Manager