The Savannah morning news., 1903-08-23

in these letters breath shall come
from the prairies, freshness from the
mountain peaks, humanity from the
men 1 meet: no de-boogishness at
all, at all, except the figures, and these
shall be few
The Canadian Pacific Railroad.
Lying down on his back, with his
head Tapped at Montreal and his feet
dipping in the sea at Victoria, B. c.,
is a-no, not a monster for every
where people speak friendly and init
mately of him, like pet name, the c.
P. r. l was long time getting on
to the fact that it was not sepia,
color, that was meant, but that c. p.
r. meant the Canadian Pacific Rail-
road. We don't have little sweetheart
names for railroads in our country.
But the c. p. r. here is very close to
the people. His backbone lying down.
is the great nerve that brings life to
all the little ganglea of farms, viii
lagos, cities, Hudson Bay Company
stations, every habitation where man
lives on the prairie or in mountain;
then besides the backbone.
This big fellow has ribs, more than
the vertebrae of an ordinary man,
running north and south, to bring in
the outlying products on both sides
to the main line. A fine figure Of a
man, forsooth, is this C. P. R.!
do not want to point a moral"
for l am taking a vacation just now
from pointing morals; but l am quite
willing to ''adorn a tale"-the tale how
the Canadian government undertook
to build the c. p. r., for the benefit of
those who advocate government control
of public utilities. Well, when the Ca
madam provinces became a dominion,
in 1867, it was necessary, of course, to
tie them together by a railroad They
were so far apart and unacquainted
with each otheri So the government
set about this business; this was in
81. 1t soon became a burning political
question. Parties rose and fell over
the how, the where and the when and
nothing was done till 70. Then they
went to work on the easiest part of the
undertaking-on the Pacific coast
where there is a level stretch to the
first of the mountains and, of course,
on the prairies. Anybody can build
a railroad on a fiat prairie, like drag
ging a toy engine and cars over the
nursery floor. Parties changed, engi-
neers went in and out, until utterly
falling with its machinery the gov
eminent gave up the contest to a. pri-
vate company in 80 Would a pri-
vate company undertake 1t? Why not?
The preliminary surveys had already
brought back word of the character
of the country, lumber wealth and
mineral wealth from the 1000 miles
of the Lake Superior region; then there
was a wheat field, so to speak, one
1000 miles wide and many thousands
long in Manitoba and saskatchewan;
in the foothills of the mountains
chance for ranches, coal fields and
natural gas. Then the mountains
five distinct ranges of them-they don't
need anything except themselves. And
ha Ao
ocean, making handy road to Japan.
People could just as well "go west to
go east" as "go east to go east" Yes,
the private company would undertake
IL, and did. Price from the govern
ment to the company 25 millions in
money and % millions in acres; con-
tract from the company to the gov
eminent, steel girdle from ocean to
ocean; time, ten years. There was no
politics in IL, no trenchmen to be taken
care of. They organized in 1881. No
tice the change: Where the govern
ment had been pattering away on the
prairie the company built three to six
miles a day; meanwhile an army of
men, with coolies of dynamite, was
blowing up the riotous country of Lake
Superior and reducing it to order and
a corps of engineers were threading
their way UP and down the four ranges
of mountains to find or make a hole
for the double steel wire to go through.
The star of the new empire went west
and the star of the old empire came
east, and at Craigellachie, on a wet
morning, Nov Z, 1885 the two morning
stars sang together and the sons of
Canada shouted for joy as the last rail
was laid in the main line of the c. P.
r. 1t had been done in four years,
much less than contract time. Since
then it has been matter of putting
in vertebrate. Go south and tap the
United States, go north and tap the