ull of complicated
notes on his philosophy of life, which with the other lobe of his brain
he was traversing in order to engulf the interviewer as soon as the
letter was finished. Shaughnessy never could have carried on such an
interview, lasting four hours of a busy life. His talks to the press
must be curt and comprehensive--or else elliptical. He had no exuding
vivacity. When I talked to him--or listened to him--he was cold and
exact. He left his chair only to walk erectly to the window. He
deviated not a syllable from the subject in hand--the system. He
worshipped that: as much as any Mikado ever did his ancestry. He paid
passing veneration to Van Horne--when from the slant of his remark I
surmised that he was critical even in his admiration for that epical
character.

Shaughnessy is essentially a system-man. When he travelled he had his
practical jokes and his Irish stories and his fondness for the social
side; but he was conventionally as correct as a time-table. Had there
been a spark of genius in him he would have extinguished it for the sake
of betterments to the most conventional Colossus in Canada. The C.P.R.
was supposed to lead. It was built for dividends, and born in politics.
It had craft at its cradle. The new policy under Shaughnessy was bigger.
It had to do less with Asia, with spectacle, with carved gods; more with
Europe, with immigration posters, with land settlement. Shaughnessy had
taken over a system which could be used ostensibly as the agent of the
Immigration Department and of the Interior; effectively as the base of
population-supply on its own account.

As Shaughnessy worked it out the C.P. had a scheme of national expansion
that acted independent of government; its own ships, trains, roads,
docks, land offices, immigration agents, poster-advertising--until the
average European looking for a way out of economic slavery believed that
the C.P.R. was the owner and operator of Canada. A belief which was not
contradicted, except officially, at home.

William Mackenzie set the pace for building; Shaughnessy for operation.
But Shaughnessy built fast. He did it under a handicap of two systems
against one. The difference was that an average new line under
Shaughnessy paid dividends, or at least did not appreciably lower
dividends already declared.

Under Lord Shaughnessy it was unofficially believed that the head of the
C.P.R. was somehow overlord to governments. Shaughnessy the