Our readers will not thank us if we take up too much space with rail-
road matters. Our references to the above will be brief. For many years
the possibility of the Grank Trunk coming in was talked about, but it was
like a will 0' the wisp. The nearest point of the system was in Chicago.
The first relief came from Mackenzie and Mann, two great railroaders,
who had risen from small beginnings. They extended their Manitoba
system into North Eastern Assiniboia and eventually to Vancouver, giving
us a second transcontinental road. Mackenzie and Mann received a large
amount of Government aid, and have been decried as leeches and vultures.
They were nothing of the kind. They were business men with a gigantic
enterprise on hand, never with more than enough capital, and they took
all the help they could get. If any one is to blame it is the giver and
not the recipient. Then came the government scheme of the Grand Trunk,
till we had three transcontinental systems, when apparently two with
efficient branch lines would have served the purpose. Both these systems
got into difficulties, and were finally absorbed by the government which
thereby incurred an almost crushing liability. The two systems now
amalgamated as the Canadian National Railways, are simply repeating
the experience of the C. P. R. That line was not completed until almost
unsurmountable financial difficulties were overcome, and for years it was
practically kept alive with borrowed money. Today it is the biggest or-
ganization of its kind in the world. If Canada keeps politics out of its
railroads, and the efficient management of today is continued, in twenty
years' time Canada will be boasting, and boasting truthfully, that she has
not only the largest, but the most remunerative system of government
railroads in the world.