ates were
still heavier. 'Coal and lumber and general merchandise cost from two
to four times as much to ship as for equal distances in the eastern
provinces.'[2]

Why not bring in competition? Because the Dominion Government blocked
the way by its veto power. In the contract with the Canadian Pacific
Syndicate a clause provided that for twenty years the Dominion would
not authorize a competing road between the company's main line and the
United States border running south or southeast or within fifteen miles
of the boundary; it was provided also that in the formation of any new
provinces to {97} the west such provinces should be required to observe
the same restriction. It was urged by the railway authorities that
foreign investors had demanded a monopoly as the price of capital, and
that without the assurance of such a monopoly the costly link to the
north of Lake Superior could never have been built. The terms of the
contract did not bar Manitoba from chartering railways: the Dominion
had indeed no power to forbid it in advance, and it was explicitly
stated by Sir John Macdonald at the time that Manitoba was not
affected. Yet when Manitoba sought to charter one railway after
another, the Dominion disallowed every act and repeatedly declared that
it would use its veto power to compel Manitoba to trade with the East
and by the Canadian Pacific Railway. A more effective means of
stirring up ill-feeling between East and West and of discouraging
immigration to the prairies could hardly have been devised.

Against these conditions Manitoba protested as one man. The Winnipeg
Board of Trade denounced the policy of 'crushing and trampling upon one
hundred thousand struggling pioneers of this prairie province to secure
a purely imaginary financial gain to one soulless corporation.' Every
Conservative candidate {98} for the House of Commons in the province
pledged himself to vote for a motion of want of confidence if the
Macdonald Government persisted in its course. The Conservative
administration of the province was overthrown because it did not go
fast or far enough in the fight. At last, in 1888, Ottawa gave way and
bought off the Canadian Pacific by a guarantee of bonds for new
extensions. After some further negotiations the Northern Pacific was
brought into Canada; and if this did not work all the miracles of cheap
rates that had been expected, Manitoba at least knew now that her ills
were those which had bee