moters have often built roads entirely out of the
proceeds of bond issues, financiers have dominated great railway
systems by a majority or controlling interest in the stock. But never
before did a group of men plan to unite, on such a scale, all three
arrangements--to build ten thousand miles of railway without themselves
investing a dollar and still retain control. The men behind the
Canadian Northern not only planned such a project, but carried it
through, displaying in the process, and at every stage of the
undertaking, a mastery of political diplomacy, an untiring persistence,
and great financial resourcefulness. They are, {190} therefore,
entitled to a special place among the world's railway builders.

Their plan was simple in principle, if wondrously complicated in
working out. It was to build the road by government subsidies and the
proceeds of the bonds guaranteed by government, and to control the road
by issuing to themselves, for their services of promotion and
management, practically all the common stock. To carry out this
audacious plan, political influence, public enthusiasm, and the
confidence of outside investors in Canada's future were all required
and were all forthcoming.

Dominion and province vied in aid. This aid took many forms. The
Dominion had abandoned in 1894 its policy of giving land-grants, but
the original companies which combined to form the Canadian Northern had
previously been promised and later received over four million acres: up
to 1914 about eighteen million dollars had been realized from the sale
of parts of this land, and the grants unsold were worth at least ten
millions more. In addition, Ontario gave two million acres and Quebec
one-third as much. Cash subsidies were not wanting. The Liberal
government of Sir Wilfrid Laurier voted something {191} less than two
millions in cash to aid in building the link between Winnipeg and Lake
Superior. It declined to recognize or aid the extension to the Pacific
coast; but in 1912 the Conservative government of Sir Robert Borden
gave over six millions for this work, and in the following year fifteen
millions more for the Ontario and western Alberta sections of the main
line. The provinces were less lavish, Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba
offering all told six millions.

But it was neither to land-grants nor to cash subsidies that the
Canadian Northern looked for its chief aid, but to government
guarantees. This device, the main