ubsidy policy.

In that year Sir Charles Tupper, minister of Railways, introduced a
resolution to grant a subsidy of $3200 per mile--sufficient to provide
the hundred tons of steel rails required for each mile at the existing
price of $32 a ton--to each of four carefully selected roads, one in
each of the four original provinces. During the next year eleven
subsidies were voted, chiefly to Quebec and New Brunswick roads; in
1885 twenty-five were voted, and fresh votes were made every year
thereafter. Many of the subsidies lapsed through failure to begin
construction, but usually they were revoted. The payments made
averaged a million dollars a year. The practice did not make for pure
politics, and it often led to the construction of lines for which there
was no economic justification whatever. Trusting shareholders were
induced to invest on the unfortunately wrong assumption that the
government had assured itself of the need {171} and the potential
profit of the line before endorsing it by a subsidy.[1] In the western
provinces a parallel policy of aiding local lines was adopted in 1884,
except that land instead of cash was offered, a policy maintained until
1894.

He who paid the piper then stood on his rights to call the tune.
Acting upon the wide power conferred by the British North America Act,
the Dominion government in 1883 sweepingly designated as 'works for the
general advantage of Canada,' and therefore subject to federal control,
not only the main lines of railways, but the branch lines then or
thereafter connecting with or crossing these lines or any of them. The
power thus claimed was not effectively exercised for some time.
D'Alton M'Carthy repeatedly urged in parliament from 1880 onward the
creation of a Dominion Railway Commission, but the opposition of the
railways proved too strong for him. When in 1886 the United States set
up its Interstate Commerce Commission, the {172} government moved and
appointed a royal commission, with Sir A. T. Galt as chairman, to
consider the general question. Their report noted the existence of
many grievances and suggested specific remedies, but considered that
until further experience of the workings of the English and American
commissions was available, Canada's needs could best be met by an
extension of the powers of the Railway Committee of the Cabinet.

It may be noted that in 1882 the selling of railway tickets by private
persons, a practice known as 'tic