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Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canada
Studies in The South and West, With Comments on Canadaполная версия

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It must be stated also that the service is not free from favoritism, and that influence is used, if not always necessary, to get in and to get on in it. The law has been gone around by means of the plea of “special qualifications,” and this evasion has sometimes been considered a political necessity on account of service to a minister or to the party generally. I suppose that the party in power favors its own adherents. The competitive system of England has a mischievous effect in the encouragement of the examinations to direct studies towards a service which nine in ten of the applicants will never reach. This evil, of numbers qualified but not appointed, has grown so great in Canada that it has lately been ordered that there shall be only one examination in each year.

The federal pension system cannot be considered settled. A man may be superannuated at any time, but by custom, not law, he retires at the full age of sixty. While in service he pays a superannuation allowance of two and a half per cent, on his salary for thirty-five years; after that, no more. If he is superannuated after ten years’ service, say, he gets one-fiftieth of his salary for each year. If he is not in fault in any way, Government may add ten years more to his service, so as to give him a larger allowance. If a man serves the full term of thirty-five years he gets thirty-five fiftieths of his salary in pension. This pension system, recognized as essential to a good civil service, has this weakness: A man pays two and a half per cent, of his salary for twenty years. If the salary is $3000, his payments would have amounted to $1200, with interest, in that time. If he then dies, his widow gets only two months’ salary as a solatium; all the rest is lost to her, and goes to the superannuation fund of the treasury. Or, a man is superannuated after thirty-five years; he has paid perhaps $2100, with interest; he draws, say, one year’s superannuative allowance, and then dies. His family get nothing at all, not even the two months’ salary they would have had if he had died in service. This is illogical and unjust. If the two and a half per cent, had been put into a life policy, the insurance being undertaken by the Government, a decent sum would have been realized at death.

A civil service is also established in the provinces. That in Quebec is better organized than the federal; the Government adds to the pension fund one-fourth of that retained from the salaries, and half pensions are extended to widows and children.

It will be seen that this pension is an essential part of the civil service system, and the method of it is at once a sort of insurance and a stimulation to faithful service. Good service is a constant inducement to retention, to promotion, and to increase of pension. The Canadians say that the systems work well both in the federal and provincial services, and in this respect, as well as in the matter of responsible government, they think their government superior to ours.

The policy of the Dominion Government, when confederation had given it the form and territory of a great nation, was to develop this into reality and solidity by creating industries, building railways, and filling up the country with settlers. As to the means of carrying out this the two parties differed somewhat. The Conservatives favored active stimulation to the extent of drawing on the future; the Liberals favored what they call a more natural if a slower growth. To illustrate: the Conservatives enacted a tariff, which was protective, to build up industries, and it is now continued, as in their view a necessity for raising the revenue needed for government expenses and for the development of the country. The Liberals favored a low tariff, and in the main the principles of free-trade. It might be impertinence to attempt to say now whether the Canadian affiliations are with the Democratic or the Republican party in the United States, but it is historical to say that for the most part the Unionists had not the sympathy of the Conservatives during our Civil War, and that they had the sympathy of the Liberals generally, and that the sympathy of the Liberals continued with the Republican party down to the Presidential campaign of 1884. It seemed to the Conservatives a necessity for the unity and growth of the Dominion to push railway construction. The Liberals, if I understand their policy, opposed mortgaging the future, and would rather let railways spring from local action and local necessity throughout the Dominion. But whatever the policies of parties may be, the Conservative Government has promoted by subsidies of money and grants of land all the great so-called Dominion railways. The chief of these in national importance, because it crosses the continent, is the Canadian Pacific. In order that I might understand its relation to the development of the country, and have some comprehension of the extent of Canadian territory, I made the journey on this line—3000 miles—from Montreal to Vancouver.

The Canadians have contributed liberally to the promotion of railways. The Hand-book of 1886 says that $187,000,000 have been given by the governments (federal and provincial) and by the municipalities towards the construction of the 13,000 miles of railways within the Dominion. The same authority says that from 1881 to July, 1885, the Federal Government gave $74,500,000 to the Canadian Pacific. The Conservatives like to note that the railway development corresponds with the political life of Sir John A. Macdonald, for upon his entrance upon political life in 1844 there were only fourteen miles of railway in operation.

The Federal Government began surveys for the Canadian Pacific road in 1871, a company was chartered the same year to build it, but no results followed. The Government then began the construction itself, and built several disconnected sections. The present company was chartered in 1880. The Dominion Government granted it a subsidy of $25,000,000 and 25,000,000 acres of land, and transferred to it, free of cost, 713 miles of railway which had been built by the Government, at a cost of about $35,000,000. In November, 1885, considerably inside the time of contract, the road was finished to the Pacific, and in 1886 cars were running regularly its entire length. In point of time, and considering the substantial character of the road, it is a marvellous achievement. Subsequently, in order to obtain a line from Montreal to the maritime ports, a subsidy of $186,000 per annum for a term of twenty years was granted to the Atlantic and North-west Railway Company, which undertook to build or acquire a line from Montreal via Sherbrooke, and across the State of Maine to St. John, St. Andrews, and Halifax. This is one of the leased lines of the Canadian Pacific, which finished it last December.

The main line, from Quebec to Montreal and Vancouver, is 3065 miles. The leased lines measure 2412 miles, one under construction 112, making a total mileage of 5589. Adding to this the lines in which the company’s influence amounts to a control (including those on American soil to St. Paul and Chicago), the total mileage of the company is over 6500. The branch lines, built or acquired in Quebec, Ontario, and Manitoba, are all necessary feeders to the main line. The cost of the Canadian Pacific, including the line built by the Government and acquired (not leased) lines, is: Cost of road, $170,689,629.51; equipment, $10,570,933.22; amount of deposit with Government to guarantee three per cent, on capital stock until August 17, 1893, $10,310,954.75. Total, $191,571,517.48.

Without going into the financial statement, nor appending the leases and guarantees, any further than to note that the capital stock is $65,000,000 and the first mortgage bonds (five per cent.) are $34,999,633, it is only necessary to say that in the report the capital foots up $112,908,019. The total earnings for 1885 were $8,308,493; for 1886, $10,081,803; for 1887, $11,600,412, while the working expenses for 1887 were $8,102,294. The gross earnings for 1888 are about $14,000,000, and the net earnings about $4,000,000. These figures show the steady growth of business.

Being a Dominion road, and favored, the company had a monopoly in Manitoba for building roads south of its line and roads connecting with foreign lines. This monopoly was surrendered in 1887 upon agreement of the Dominion Government to guarantee 3 1/2 per cent, interest on $15,000,000 of the company’s land grant bonds for fifty years. The company has paid its debt to the Government, partly by surrender of a portion of its lands, and now absolutely owns its entire line free of Government obligations. It has, however, a claim upon the Government of something like six million dollars, now in litigation, on portions of the mountain sections of the road built by the Government, which are not up to the standard guaranteed in the contract with the company.

The road was extended to the Pacific as a necessity of the national development, and the present Government is convinced that it is worth to the country all it has cost. The Liberals’ criticism is that the Government has spent a vast sum for what it can show no assets, and that it has enriched a private company instead of owning the road itself. The property is no doubt a good one, for the road is well built as to grades and road-bed, excellently equipped, and notwithstanding the heavy Lake Superior and mountain work, at a less cost than some roads that preceded it.

The full significance of this transcontinental line to Canada, Great Britain, and the United States will appear upon emphasizing the value of the line across the State of Maine to connect with St. John and Halifax; upon the fact that its western terminus is in regular steamer communication with Hong-Kong via Yokohama; that the company is building new and swift steamers for this line, to which the British Government has granted an annual subsidy of £60,000, and the Dominion one of $15,000; that a line will run from Vancouver to Australia; and that a part of this round-the-world route is to be a line of fast steamers between Halifax and England. The Canadian Pacific is England’s shortest route to her Pacific colonies, and to Japan and China; and in case of a blockade in the Suez Canal it would become of the first importance for Australia and India. It is noted as significant by an enthusiast of the line that the first loaded train that passed over its entire length carried British naval stores transferred from Quebec to Vancouver, and that the first car of merchandise was a cargo of Jamaica sugar refined at Halifax and sent to British Columbia.

II

We left Montreal, attached to the regular train, on the evening of September 22d. The company runs six through trains a week, omitting the despatch of a train on Sunday from each terminus. The time is six days and rive nights. We travelled in the private ear of Mr. T. G. Shaughnessy, the manager, who was on a tour of inspection, and took it leisurely, stopping at points of interest on the way. The weather was bad, rainy and cold, in eastern Canada, as it was all over New England, and as it continued to be through September and October. During our absence there was snow both in Montreal and Quebec. We passed out of the rain into lovely weather north of Lake Superior; encountered rain again at Winnipeg; but a hundred miles west of there, on the prairie, we were blessed with as delightful weather as the globe can furnish, which continued all through the remainder of the trip until our return to Montreal, October 12th. The climate just east of the Rocky Mountains was a little warmer than was needed for comfort (at the time Ontario and Quebec had snow), but the air was always pure and exhilarating; and all through the mountains we had the perfection of lovely days. On the Pacific it was still the dry season, though the autumn rains, which continue all winter, with scarcely any snow, were not far off. For mere physical pleasure of living and breathing, I know no atmosphere superior to that we encountered on the rolling lands east of the Rockies.

Between Ottawa and Winnipeg (from midnight of the 22d till the morning of the 25th) there is not much to interest the tourist, unless he is engaged in lumbering or mining. What we saw was mainly a monotonous wilderness of rocks and small poplars, though the country has agricultural capacities after leaving Rat Portage (north of Lake of the Woods), just before coming upon the Manitoba prairies. There were more new villages and greater crowds of people at the stations than I expected. From Sudbury the company runs a line to the Sault Sainte Marie to connect with lines it controls to Duluth and St. Paul. At Port Arthur and Fort William is evidence of great transportation activity, and all along the Lake Superior Division there are signs that the expectations of profitable business in lumber and minerals will be realized. At Port Arthur we strike the Western Division. On the Western, Mountain, and Pacific divisions the company has adopted the 24-hour system, by which a.m. and P.M. are abolished, and the hours from noon till midnight are counted as from 12 to 24 o’clock. For instance, the train reaches Eagle River at 24.55, Winnipeg at 9.30, and Brandon at 16.10.

At Winnipeg we come into the real North-west, and a condition of soil, climate, and political development as different from eastern Canada as Montana is from New England. This town, at the junction of the Red and Assiniboin rivers, in a valley which is one of the finest wheat-producing sections of the world, is a very important place. Railways, built and projected, radiate from it like spokes from a wheel hub. Its growth has been marvellous. Formerly known as Fort Garry, the chief post of the Hudson’s Bay Company, it had in 1871 a population of only one hundred. It is now the capital of the province of Manitoba, contains the chief workshops of the Canadian Pacific between Montreal and Vancouver, and has a population of 25,000. It is laid out on a grand scale, with very broad streets—Main Street is 200 feet wide—has many substantial public and business buildings, streetcars, and electric-lights, and abundant facilities for trade. At present it is in a condition of subsided “boom;” the whole province has not more than 120,000 people, and the city for that number is out of proportion. Winnipeg must wait a little for the development of the country. It seems to the people that the town would start up again if it had more railroads. Among the projects much discussed is a road northward between Lake Winnipeg and Lake Manitoba, turning eastward to York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. The idea is to reach a short water route to Europe. From all the testimony I have read as to ice in Hudson’s Bay harbors and in the straits, the short period the straits are open, and the uncertainty from year to year as to the months they will be open, this route seems chimerical. But it does not seem so to its advocates, and there is no doubt that a portion of the line between the lakes first named would develop a good country and pay. A more important line—indeed, of the first importance—is built for 200 miles north-west from Portage la Prairie, destined to go to Prince Albert, on the North Saskatchewan. This is the Manitoba and North-west, and it makes its connection from Portage la Prairie with Winnipeg over the Canadian Pacific. An antagonism has grown up ill Manitoba towards the Canadian Pacific. This arose from the monopoly privileges enjoyed by it as a Dominion road. The province could build no road with extra-territorial connections. This monopoly was surrendered in consideration of the guarantee spoken of from the Government. The people of Winnipeg also say that the company discriminated against them in the matter of rates, and that the province must have a competing outlet. The company says that it did not discriminate, but treated Winnipeg like other towns on the line, having an eye to the development of the whole prairie region, and that the trouble was that it refused to discriminate in favor of Winnipeg, so that it might become the distributing-point of the whole North-west. Whatever the truth may be, the province grew increasingly restless, and determined to build another road. The Canadian Pacific has two lines on either side of the Red River, connecting at Emerson and Gretna with the Red River branches of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, and Manitoba. It has also two branches running westward south of its main line, penetrating the fertile wheat-fields of Manitoba. The province graded a third road, paralleling the two to the border, and the river, southward from Winnipeg to the border connecting there with a branch of the Northern Pacific, which was eager to reach the rich wheat,-fields of the North-west. The provincial Red River Railway also proposed to cross the branches of the Canadian Pacific, and connect at Portage la Prairie with the Manitoba and North-west. The Canadian Pacific, which had offered to sell to the province its Emerson branch, saying that there was not business enough for three parallel routes, insisted upon its legal rights and resisted this crossing. Hence the provincial and railroad conflict of the fall of 1888. The province built the new road, but it was alleged that the Northern Pacific was the real party, and that Manitoba has so far put itself into the hands of that corporation. There can be no doubt that Manitoba will have its road and connect the Northern Pacific with the Saskatchewan country, and very likely will parallel the main line of the Canadian Pacific. But whether it will get from the Northern Pacific the relief it thought itself refused by the Canadian, many people in Winnipeg begin to doubt; for however eager rival railways may be for new territory, they are apt to come to an understanding in order to keep up profitable rates. They must live.

I went down on the southern branch of the Canadian Pacific, which runs west, not far from our border, as far as Boissevain. It is a magnificent wheat country, and already very well settled and sprinkled with villages. The whole prairie was covered with yellow wheat-stacks, and teams loaded with wheat were wending their way from all directions to the elevators on the line. There has been quite an emigration of Russian Mennonites to this region, said to be 9000 of them. We passed near two of their villages—a couple of rows of square unbeautiful houses facing each other, with a street of mud between, as we see them in pictures of Russian communes. These people are a peculiar and somewhat mystical sect, separate and unassimilated in habits, customs, and faith from their neighbors, but peaceful, industrious, and thrifty. I shall have occasion to speak of other peculiar immigration, encouraged by the governments and by private companies.

There can be no doubt of the fertility of all the prairie region of Manitoba and Assiniboin. Great heat is developed in the summers, but cereals are liable, as in Dakota, to be touched, as in 1888, by early frost. The great drawback from Winnipeg on westward is the intense cold of winter, regarded not as either agreeable or disagreeable, but as a matter of economy. The region, by reason of extra expense for fuel, clothing, and housing, must always be more expensive to live in than, say, Ontario.

The province of Manitoba is an interesting political and social study. It is very unlike Ontario or British Columbia. Its development has been, in freedom and self-help, very like one of our Western Territories, and it is like them in its free, independent spirit. It has a spirit to resist any imposed authority. We read of the conflicts between the Hudson’s Bay and the Northwestern Fur companies and the Selkirk settlers, who began to come in in 1812. Gradually the vast territory of the North-west had a large number of “freemen,” independent of any company, and of half-breed Frenchmen. Other free settlers sifted in. The territory was remote from the Government, and had no facilities of communication with the East, even after the union. The rebellion of 1870-71 was repeated in 1885, when Riel was called back from Montana to head the discontented. The settlers could not get patents for their lands, and they had many grievances, which they demanded should be redressed in a “bill of rights.” There were aspects of the insurrection, not connected with the race question, with which many well-disposed persons sympathized. But the discontent became a violent rebellion, and had to be suppressed. The execution of Riel, which some of the Conservatives thought ill-advised, raised a race storm throughout Canada; the French element was in a tumult, and some of the Liberals made opposition capital out of the event. In the province of Quebec it is still a deep grievance, for party purposes partly, as was shown in the recent election of a federal member of Parliament in Montreal.

Manitoba is Western in its spirit and its sympathies. Before the building of the Canadian Pacific its communication was with Minnesota. Its interests now largely lie with its southern neighbors. It has a feeling of irritation with too much federal dictation, and frets under the still somewhat undefined relations of power between the federal and the provincial governments, as was seen in the railway conflict. Besides, the natural exchange of products between south and north—between the lower Mississippi and the Red River of the North and the north-west prairies—is going to increase; the north and south railway lines will have, with the development of industries and exchange of various sorts, a growing importance compared with the great east and west lines. Nothing can stop this exchange and the need of it along our whole border west of Lake Superior. It is already active and growing, even on the Pacific, between Washington Territory and British Columbia.

For these geographical reasons, and especially on account of similarity of social and political development, I was strongly impressed with the notion that if the Canadian Pacific Railway had not been built when it was, Manitoba would by this time have gravitated to the United States, and it would only have been a question of time when the remaining Northwest should have fallen in. The line of the road is very well settled, and yellow with wheat westward to Regina, but the farms are often off from the line, as the railway sections are for the most part still unoccupied; and there are many thriving villages: Portage la Prairie, from which the Manitoba and North-western Railway starts north-west, with a population of 3000; Brandon, a busy grain mart, standing on a rise of ground 1150 feet above the sea, with a population of 4000 and over; Qu’.ppelle, in the rich valley of the river of that name, with 700; Regina, the capital of the North-west Territory, on a vast plain, with 800; Moosejay, a market-town towards the western limit of the settled country, with 600. This is all good land, but the winters are severe.

Naturally, on the rail we saw little game, except ducks and geese on the frequent fresh-water ponds, and occasionally coyotes and prairie-dogs. But plenty of large game still can be found farther north. At Stony Mountain, fifteen miles north of Winnipeg, the site of the Manitoba penitentiary, we saw a team of moose, which Colonel Bedson, the superintendent, drives—fleet animals, going easily fifteen miles an hour. They were captured only thirty-five miles north of the prison, where moose are abundant. Colonel Bedson has the only large herd of the practically extinct buffalo. There are about a hundred of these uncouth and picturesque animals, which have a range of twenty or thirty miles over the plains, and are watched by mounted keepers. They were driven in, bulls, cows, and calves, the day before our arrival—it seemed odd that we could order up a herd of buffaloes by telephone, but we did—and we saw the whole troop lumbering over the prairie, exactly as we were familiar with them in pictures. The colonel is trying the experiment of crossing them with common cattle. The result is a half-breed of large size, with heavier hind-quarters and less hump than the buffalo, and said to be good beef. The penitentiary has taken in all the convicts of the North-west Territory, and there were only sixty-five of them. The institution is a model one in its management. We were shown two separate chapels—one for Catholics and another for Protestants.

All along the line settlers are sifting in, and there are everywhere signs of promoted immigration. Not only is Canada making every effort to fill up its lands, but England is interested in relieving itself of troublesome people. The experiment has been tried of bringing out East-Londoners. These barbarians of civilization are about as unfitted for colonists as can be. Small bodies of them have been aided to make settlements, but the trial is not very encouraging; very few of them take to the new life. The Scotch crofters do better. They are accustomed to labor and thrift, and are not a bad addition to the population. A company under the management of Sir John Lister Kaye is making a larger experiment. It has received sections from the Government and bought contiguous sections from the railway, so as to have large blocks of land on the road. A dozen settlements are projected. The company brings over laborers and farmers, paying their expenses and wages for a year. A large central house is built on each block, tools and cattle are supplied, and the men are to begin the cultivation of the soil. At the end of a year they may, if they choose, take up adjacent free Government land and begin to make homes for themselves working meantime on the company land, if they will. By this plan they are guaranteed support for a year at least, and a chance to set up for themselves. The company secures the breaking up of its land and a crop, and the nucleus of a town. The further plan is to encourage farmers, with a capital of a thousand dollars, to follow and settle in the neighborhood. There will then be three ranks—the large company proprietors, the farmers with some capital, and the laborers who are earning their capital. We saw some of these settlements on the line that looked promising. About 150 settlers, mostly men, arrived last fall, and with them were sent out English tools and English cattle. The plan looks to making model communities, on something of the old-world plan of proprietor, farmer, and laborer. It would not work in the United States.

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