tern at 65. The securities of several of the minor
roads had been almost entirely wiped out by reorganizations. In 1866
some $4,180,000 was paid in dividends and leases, representing only 2.7
per cent on the $158,000,000 which the roads had cost or were alleged
to have cost. Premature extension into unremunerative territory, for
political or contracting reasons, excessive competition in the fertile
areas, heavy fixed charges on inflated capital or leased roads, water
competition, absentee proprietorship, all played their part. Whatever
the causes, the results were clear, and capitalists long fought shy of
Canadian railway projects.

In the first thirty years of Canadian railway development no question
aroused more interest than that of the gauge to be adopted. The cows
of the good Dutch burghers of New Amsterdam fixed the windings of
Broadway as they remain to this day. The width of the carts used in
English coal-mines centuries ago {96} still determines the gauge of
railway track and railway cars over nearly all the world. 'Before
every engine,' declares Mr H. G. Wells, 'trots the ghost of a
superseded horse.' When the steam locomotive was invented, and used
upon the coal-mine tramways, it was made of the same
four-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch gauge. In England, in spite of the
preferences of Brunel, Stephenson's great rival, for a seven-foot
gauge, the narrower width soon triumphed, though the Great Western did
not entirely abandon its wider track until 1892. In Canada the
struggle was longer and more complicated.

It was a question on which engineers differed. Speed, steadiness, cost
of track construction, and cost of maintenance were all to be
considered, and were all diversely estimated. In early years, before
the need of standardizing equipment was felt, many experiments were
made, especially in the United States. In the southern states five
feet was the usual width, and the Erie was built on a gauge of six
feet, to fit an engine bought at a bargain. But in the United States,
as in England, the four-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch width was dominant,
and would have been adopted in Canada without question, had not local
{97} interests, appealing, as often, to patriotic prejudice, succeeded
in clouding the issue.

When the road from Portland to Montreal was being planned, the astute
Portland promoters insisted upon a gauge of five feet six inches, to
prevent the switching of traffic to Boston. Montreal,