A railway is a republic and a monarchy. It is a republic because there is no pre-emption of high offices for any favoured class among its servants. It is a monarchy in the virtual dictatorship of its President. The Canadian National system has practically a hundred thousand employes, to every man of whom, if he entered the service young enough, the highest executive office is open.

All the great rises in railway history have not begun on headquarters staffs. The most important vice-president of the Canadian National—S. J. Hungerford—came from the lathe. President Smith of the New York Central lines, worked on the section. Van Horne was a telegraph operator. Lord Shaughnessy was a clerk in Milwaukee. Sir William Whyte, who administered the C.P.R. west of Fort William with great distinction for many years, was a brakeman on the Credit Valley line. Sir William Mackenzie taught school. Sir Donald Mann’s prowess with the axe is proverbial, wherever the story of his encounter with a touchy Russian officer in Manchuria is told.

Two aspects of the openness of the climb to railway summits are, perhaps, worth discussing—the ability and character developed among executive officers; and the relations of railway with railway when they meet as rival, and sometimes hostile, powers.

Basically, one does not claim a superiority for either generation of colleagues with whom he has worked during fifty years. On the whole, I think, we older fellows, who are a little nearer the Shorter Catechism than some of our more recent executive brethren, compare fairly favourably with our heirs. But, in social and ethical standards, there has been a tremendous leveling up in the railway as well as in other worlds.

Take drink—or rather, think of drink, and the general business code. Leaving aside the controversy which breeds such a remark as that a man would rather have prohibition than no alcohol at all, there has been a beneficent change in custom. In the old Bonaventure station at Montreal, over forty years ago, every pay day saw the office desks, in some departments, littered with almost as many whiskey bottles as pay checks. Where the bottle abounds, its unhappier fruits will be found also. It may be due to a lack of observation, as well as to a want of experience, but I cannot assert whether, in Montreal at that time, spiritual discussion was as inevitable a concomitant of spirituous indulgence as it was reputed to be in Scotland in days not lang syne. But nothing is more certain and more gratifying than the elimination of intoxicating liquor as an ingredient in daily business.

With slacker social proprieties than we now enjoy, the lower standard of ethics in the railway business showed itself in manners which may be mentioned without offense, seeing that there have been great changes for the better. Forty years ago the great bodies of railway workmen were not organized in unions. The recurring bottle on the office desk had its fellow where men like engineers gathered together. The advent of labour unions, though it brought a few complications with which, perhaps, the services need not have been troubled, unquestionably raised the morale of all the bodies of men enrolled in them. To-day there is the severest look-down on the man who allows liquor to mar his efficiency—it was so, long before prohibition descended upon us. Any man in trouble because of drink gets very little sympathy and very short shrift from his union.

With the rise in morale as to personal behaviour has come a corresponding advance in the breadth and ability with which the men’s side of labour difficulties is handled whenever cases of discipline arise—of which something presently.

Improvement of morale does not largely influence another condition, which may not affect railways more than it does other walks of life: though, with the multitudes of men, and variety of departments, the situation may be thrown into stronger relief in railway administration than in some other branches of industry. I allude to promotion, and the reasons why some men—most men—do not rise high or fast.

An old friend in London who had developed a unique business out of nothing, was asked what percentage of those who had worked under him during sixty years had enough executive capacity to deal with an emergency when their superior was away, without being frightened by their assumption of responsibility. His answer was: “Perhaps two per cent.—not more.”

Sir William Whyte with whom this facet of success was discussed, thought the estimate was low, for railways, because the very nature of railroading—movement, climatic emergencies, accidents, for example—develops latent ability to meet unexpected conditions, to an extent that does not apply to a calling wherein the employes operate in one set of buildings. But, Sir William said, an outsider would be surprised at the number of men who declined promotion because of fear that they would be inadequate to enlarged, unfamiliar duties. One recalls our first engineer at Edmonton who, promoted to a superintendency, asked for his throttle again.

One is sometimes divided between the two views—that ability is scarce in the world, and that it is abundant. The question was once raised among a company of men of affairs—How many high officers in public, or semi-public service, are the superiors in ability of their chief subordinates? One, with a wide knowledge of lands and men, said he thought that perhaps two in five would be the average.

“Oh,” said another, who had sat in Parliament, “your percentage is far too high. There may be ten able men in the House of Commons—one in sixty-seven!”

It is true that many men in railway service have a lower estimate of their own ability than their superiors have had; and that they have remained stationary because they hadn’t the courage to rise when the chance came. There are others—not many—who have risen pretty high because, in the man-power of a railway there is something like the steam-power which moves trains. A man may be just as powerful as a locomotive; and just as narrow, and just as helpless if he doesn’t stay on the track where he was put.

Here, for instance, is a youth in an office, blessed with the great virtues of willingness, diligence, method, perseverance, and the ambition to better himself. He isn’t everlastingly looking at the clock. If he is asked to stay late, he shows that he likes to be thought important enough to be invited to share an extra burden. All these distinctions may belong to a head which does not harbour an expansive, wide-seeing mind. They combine into an efficiency of a sort that is not at all to be despised, and which almost inevitably brings promotion.

In spite of the impulses to a liberalized mastery of his work, such a man will develop qualities that magnify the tendency to use red tape which afflicts some officials in all large institutions, from Governments down. It narrows the capacity of subordinates through a persistent, but usually unrecognized dread of giving an official inferior full scope to develop any originality he may possess. The fear of the secondary man coming to the primary place is common everywhere. You cannot expect a small man to display the qualities of a giant.

A railway officer, like the centurion who, being under authority, had soldiers under him, may wire two or three thousand miles to a subordinate and know that his directions will be obeyed. Perhaps there is no more potent inducer of a sense of authority than this ability to command, at long range, by the invisible messenger. It sometimes produces in a railway official, to whom the wires are free, a rather morbid pride in keeping in touch with his office when he is away, by making his office keep constantly in touch with him. An old colleague used to say that if he could edit the departmental telegrams of any leading railway system on this continent, and be paid a cent a word for prevented verbiage, he would become disgracefully rich in five years.

The admirable tendency in executive efficiency—the encouragement of initiative—is represented by the practice of the departmental head whose duty carried him often and far afield—frequently for weeks at a time he would be absent from his office. He secured the ablest assistance his appropriation afforded; and when he went away his instruction to his deputy was:—“Don’t bother me with telegrams, unless it is absolutely necessary—I assume you are equal to your job. Whatever comes up, don’t be afraid to deal with it, according to your best judgment. Always have a clear reason for whatever action you take, and when I come back I will back you up, even if I don’t agree with all you have done.”

It is rather a tempting excursus—this discussion of the discovery and use of executive ability; but it must be passed by, with the further remark that, on the whole, railways, as I have known them, are staffed by able, conscientious men, in all ranks; and that, while our twenty years of phenomenal expansion cannot recur, and the scope for promotions will be limited, compared with what it was, railway service will always be a great arena for the use of talents of the highest order, even though they may first be exercised in the most unlikely-looking corners of a great system.

Railway rivalry is as keen as any other rivalry in business or politics, though I think it is healthier than what one sometimes sees in the political sphere, where ultimate rewards and punishments lie with electorates who may have given no study to the affairs they judge. Human nature being human nature, the personal equation sometimes enters prejudicially into the larger responsibilities confided to individuals.

The public has occasionally seen it in speed contests and rate wars. In the middle eighties the Grand Trunk, stung by the too challenging advent of the C.P.R., and both lines being subject to certain personalities which should have subdued themselves, ran competing trains between Ottawa and Montreal in something over two hours. For several years, owing to incompatibilities at the top, the Grand Trunk and C.P.R. did not exchange passes. When the Grand Trunk Pacific was building, and a Grand Trunk Pacific man had business in Montreal, although the shortest way was by C.P.R.—and the journey would bring revenue to the C.P.R. sleeping and dining car departments—he travelled via Chicago, because President Shaughnessy and President Hays had fallen out.

It is no reflection on Lord Shaughnessy or Sir William Mackenzie to say that they did not get along well together. The explanation was in the conscious majesty of the C.P.R. in presence of a rival which had carried all the marks of infant feebleness and youthful audacity; and in the natural-born imperiousness of a man who knew without boasting of it, that he was doing a great work, and did not need, on his abilities, to take second place to any native or adopted Canadian. But even here, the individual incompatibility could be subordinated to a statesmanlike regard for interests which were greater than either man’s temperament—of which two instances may be given.

Perhaps the most brilliant stroke the Canadian Northern ever made was the acquisition of the line from Regina to Prince Albert from its owners, and away from its lessees the Canadian Pacific. When it is said that at the beginning of its operation as a Canadian Northern branch the old Qu’Appelle and Long Lake furnished six million bushels of wheat for delivery at Port Arthur, the importance of the change may be appreciated. It gave us main line haulage equal to 600,000 miles for one full-loaded car.

In the fall of 1906 the lease to the C.P.R. was expiring, and the owners of the railway offered it to the Canadian Northern. Mr. Mackenzie caused Sir Thomas Shaughnessy to be asked whether he desired to retain the road, as he would not negotiate if the C.P.R. wished to retain the property. The reply was a speedy “No,” and the transfer was settled that very day.

On the other side of the account—a time came when it was thought that some closer association between the C.P.R. and C.N.R. might be advisable, in view of the impending competition of the G.T.P. against both. Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, meeting a Canadian Northern officer one day in Montreal, took him to his room; and said there was an opportunity for better relations between the two lines. He and Mackenzie, Sir Thomas said, didn’t get along very well, but that needn’t make any difference. Wouldn’t his present friend and old colleague take the matter up, in a friendly spirit, with Mackenzie? The effort was made, with excellent prospects of success, until political consid—but that’s another story.

These things are mentioned because, when one goes on to say that railway relations are fully as good as human nature and commercial competition will permit, it must not be understood that anything like Christian perfection is claimed for our sort of people. Speaking broadly, but very comprehensively, the personal relations of railway chiefs are excellent. When difficult questions have been fought over, and fought out, friendliness resumes its wonted dominion over the contenders. It would be said by my friends Mr. Beatty, President of the C.P.R., and Mr. Kelley, formerly President of the Grand Trunk, I think, that our relations were always of the happiest, whether we were associated competitively, or co-operatively.

Mr. Kelley, who dropped out of Canadian activities when the Grand Trunk organization was nationalized, was like M. H. MacLeod, in his change from engineering to general administration. He was an American with a wide range of construction experience, abroad as well as in the western United States when the Indians were a menace to advancing civilization.

Mr. Beatty, too, is an example of what is regarded as a change of profession. He went to the C.P.R. as a young lawyer; and became president at forty years old, after several years’ headship of the legal department. He exemplifies the great truth about administrative quality—that it is not routine proficiency, but grasp of varying conditions, and capacity quickly to reach and execute decisions which constitute the title to supreme executive control.

When, in October, 1918, Lord Shaughnessy retired, and Mr. Beatty became his successor, a very experienced C.P.R. director was asked why so young a lawyer had been so remarkably elevated. “Because he is the best-equipped man for the job,” was the complete answer.

I do not think it is true that as men of affairs grow older they are prone to look back and say there were giants in those days. As a father rejoices in his son’s eminence, so an old railroader is delighted to see executives who are young enough to be his boys conspicuously displaying every mastery of their work. After all, to have any other disposition would indicate that the generation going down the hill had been unable to impart anything worth while to those who are ascending the heights.

One’s pride in President Beatty as a man who adorns his profession, and dignifies every phase of Canadian achievement he touches, is the gratification of a competitor as well as the appreciation of a colleague during the strain of war. The Canadian Pacific is a Canadian institution; and I am certain that in its first Canadian-born President it has a chief whom his countrymen will have abundant cause to honour without waiting for his absence to direct attention to the value of his presence.

Railway relationships were doubly gratifying during the war, which had its compensations. The question arose of obtaining the maximum efficiency of war service from the Canadian railways, as it had more instantly arisen in Britain, and was fated to appear in the United States. In Britain there was a Governmental amalgamation of railway services, as there was in the United States several years later.

Something like the British method was proposed in Canada; but the Government decided to put patriotic efficiency up to the railways themselves. The Railway War Board was the outcome.

It was established in co-operation with Dr. Reid, Minister of Railways and Canals, who showed in this, as in the subsequent setting up of the Canadian National Board of Directors, an exemplary superiority to political influences. His letter to me, at the handing over of the Government railways to the directors who were appointed to administer the Canadian Northern, containing the most explicit assertion of the necessity for conducting our business on a purely businesslike basis, was, I have no doubt, all the more readily written, because of the experience already gained, of how the railways could serve the nation and the war with disregard of the ordinary rivalries of competitive business.

We who served on the War Board can say that we gave to the nation the maximum of efficiency and economy in our power. We merely did our bit. We never looked for a word of gratitude from Parliament—and proved the wisdom of “Blessed is he who expecteth little.”

Curiously, the Government ownership of railways played an absolutely unique part in this phase of railway history. The Intercolonial, in a wonderful, and totally unforeseen way, justified its building as a political railway. One is the more delighted to say this, because of a somewhat different tone that has perforce been discernible in one’s allusions to some aspects of its administration from its earlier to its latter days.

For three years our Atlantic ports absolutely saved the situation, as far as Canada’s sustained support for the war was concerned. Until the United States followed our example, in April, 1917, the short-line military access to the Atlantic ocean during the winter was not open to Canada. We couldn’t reach Portland by the Grand Trunk, or St. John, freely, by the C.P.R., because either movement meant using a foreign neutral for military purposes. The Intercolonial, therefore, was our true approach to Europe.

But the Intercolonial ran only from Montreal; and troops and supplies had to come from all over Canada. There could not be efficient movement from and to Montreal without co-operation in all the country between Montreal and Vancouver and Prince Rupert. The four main Canadian railway systems for war purposes were, therefore, operated as one vast national system. The Intercolonial in winter and spring was the only small end of the funnel. In summer, as Halifax was the nearest port to Britain, and the submarine menace made the shortest possible sea voyage more important than short land journeys on this side of the Atlantic, the Intercolonial was also in extensive use.

In several vitally important respects the Intercolonial was more consequential than the other lines combined. It had to receive a larger proportion of wounded and returning troops than any of them. The first provision for hospital trains fell on the Intercolonial; and the “fish trains” were its peculiar care. Before coming to the “fish trains’” part in making the world safe for democracy, let a word be said about Moncton’s and Halifax’s patriotic service.

Moncton, perhaps, excelled all other Canadian cities in the constancy of its beneficence to soldiers going to the war. Never a troop train reached Moncton the soldiers in which did not receive hospitality from the citizens, and inspiration from the town band. On one day, for example, the band gave melodious welcome to eleven trainloads of soldiers. Many of the players were Intercolonial employes, who sacrificed much time and money to speed the departing warriors.

Halifax was blown to pieces by the war. But her recovery from the worst disaster that has befallen any Canadian city was swift and courageous. With troops going or coming, on many of the biggest steamers afloat—the Olympic was the greatest ferrier of valour the world has ever seen—there was promptitude and skill in every movement out and in. During demobilization Halifax was used in summer as it had been during hostilities, in the interest of speed. On the morning of July 9th, 1919, the Olympic docked at No. 2 pier at 7.15. The first special train, Intercolonial to Montreal, thence C.P.R., to Vancouver, pulled out at 7.40, the next at 8.02 and the third at 8.15. The eleventh special from the Olympic, brought the total of men disembarked up to 5,430, and left at five minutes past eleven.

“Fish trains” carried British gold to be minted at Ottawa, most of it to be sent to the United States to pay for war material. “Silk trains” carried Chinese coolies who were brought across the Pacific to work behind the trenches in France and Flanders. Between July, 1917, and April, 1918, sixty-seven “silk trains” entered Halifax carrying 48,708 coolies. But the coolies, even when they could be kept behind blinds, were not as interesting as the boxes of gold, of which the public knew nothing, and about which observers along the route were mystified indeed.

Warships brought to Halifax gold cargoes each worth from ten to twenty million dollars. The average sized “fish” special consisted of six baggage cars (the first as a buffer behind the engine, and accommodating guards), and a private car, in which were railway officials. At night an armed guard rode on the engine. Through a train telephone, notice was given of anybody having authority to pass through the cars.

The most precious “fish train” was of eleven cars, holding sixty-seven million dollars. A wheel tapper at a division point said to another, “I wonder what kind of a train this is, with so many baggage cars and no passengers.”

“I’ve heard it’s carrying gold,” said the other.

A discussion of the values followed, and the estimate was made that the freight was worth from ten to fifteen thousand dollars.

After all, these features of war service were only unusual variations from phases of railway management which are special to Canada. We love our climate. Canadian children would almost as soon lose the summer as do without the winter. But there are certain disadvantages in our relationship to the North Pole. It is all very well to say that things don’t grow in the winter, anyway—not even in Texas. But the longer the winter the more handfeeding of cattle there must be. A Cobalt silver mine’s ore mill must be heated in winter, as one in Mexico need not be. It takes more coal to keep up locomotive steam in forty below zero than must be burned at forty above.

Trains fall behind their schedules in very cold weather, not because of operating inefficiency, but because temperature is the mightiest tyrant in the world. Compared with the southern states, or northern England, for example, equipment must be built to subdue Jack Frost in his sharpest mood. Treble windows, asbestos-covered steam pipes beneath the cars, to withstand the piercing cold and the rushing wind, which takes the heat from them faster than the summer sun drinks dew—these are some of the factors against time-keeping when the thermometer is low.

Dripping water from wash-rooms or dining-car kitchens will often freeze the outlets of pipes. When the train is examined at a division point, instead of the customary ten minutes for testing, and priming the cars with ice and water, twenty or thirty are occupied thawing out the pipes at crucial spots.

If, when winter comes, there were a freezing of the track, and no thaw until the spring break, care of lines would be comparatively simple. But the all-powerful temperature is as changeable as an April sky. Thaws and rains arrive, switches and sidings must be kept clear of ice, so that when trains pass or turn in there is no uncertainty about where they will go. Depressions and elevations in the roadbed, through the freaks of frost, compel the adjustment of the rail levels—shimming it is called—which makes spring travel somewhat unstable.

The item of station and water-tank fuel is big. How many people realize that every water tank must be heated, night as well as day, from fall to spring, and that in most cases the water supply must be maintained by a man who patrols perhaps fifty miles of line on a gasoline-driven jigger, doing nothing but pumping and warming water?

It isn’t all lavender, this running of railways in a Canadian winter. One’s admiration for the constancy of the men who are out on the line never diminishes—it is good medicine to have walked half the night in thirty below zero to obtain help for a frozen-up train on a pioneer line. As we are touching on the service of workmen, perhaps this is a suitable place to name a feature of the Railway War Board’s work which deserves far more appreciation than can be given to it here.

Formerly each railway was a separate entity, as far as the trade unions were concerned. The war brought about a unification which is still effective in many respects. For all labor matters we formed a Board of Adjustment on which the railways and the unions had equal representation. The chairman was changed every six months, the companies and the unions supplying him alternately.

Every contested case of discipline came before the Board, as before a Court. It was threshed out, and a decision arrived at, by which the company concerned stood, even though it was against the grain to reinstate a man whose dismissal was believed to have been justified.

In no case was it necessary to call in an independent authority to review a judgment of the Board of Adjustment. The labor representatives were as judicially minded as their colleagues. I did not sit on this Board, but was, of course, in the closest touch with its work and results. Nothing finer in desire for, and capacity to get at the truth could have been displayed than the men’s representatives invariably showed.

It must not be supposed that one’s admiration is confined to what, for the want of a better word, must still be called the lower ranks of the service. After all, a railway is an entity of vast ramifications. To be a true success it must work effectively in all its parts, and win the goodwill of those whom it serves. It would take pages and pages to sketch, ever so fragmentarily, the wealth of comradeship, official and otherwise, which was woven into half a century’s railway service.

Publication of these recollections has renewed, in lively fashion, many memories and associations which one had rather supposed the years had dimmed. Survey of what has been written and received makes it only too clear how inadequately one has shown forth the excellence of friends and comrades whose goodwill, forbearance and support have made a long and exacting toil infinitely worth while.