There is the nub and the rub and the hub of the whole thing, and the discrimination bears just as vitally on fruit and dairy products and lumber and coal as on wheat. It is a question that has to be settled in Canada within the next few years, or her west-bound traffic will build up Portland and Seattle instead of Vancouver and Prince Rupert.
The whole problem of the effect of Panama is so new in Canada that data do not exist to make comparisons; but details have been carefully gathered by American ports, and the cases are a close enough parallel to illustrate what Panama means in the world of traffic to-day. Freight on a car of Washington lumber to New York is from three hundred ninety-five to four hundred eleven dollars; by water, the freight is from one hundred to one hundred and seventy-five dollars. To bring a car of Washington fir diagonally across the continent to Norfolk costs eighty-five cents a hundred weight. To bring it round by Panama costs twenty cents, or to ship the very same cargo from Norfolk to England—which many southern dealers are now doing—costs twelve to fifteen cents, including the handling at both ends. Dry goods from New York to Texas by water cost eighty-nine cents; by rail, one dollar and eighty-two cents. Oranges by rail from the Pacific to the Atlantic cost twenty-three dollars a ton; by water before the canal opened, breaking bulk twice, ten dollars, and through the canal, when bulk is not broken, will cost only five to eight dollars. On oranges alone California will save twenty million dollars a year shipping via Panama. The Balfour-Guthrie firm of Antwerp can ship a ton of groceries from Europe to Los Angeles round the Horn for the same amount the Southern Pacific ships that ton from Los Angeles to San Francisco—namely, six dollars plus. The rail rate on salt in Washington is eight dollars seventy cents for eighty-eight miles; the river rate one dollar fifty cents. I could give instances in the South where cotton by rail costs two dollars a bale; by water, twenty-five cents.
If Panama works this great reduction, this revolution, in freights, will that not hurt the railroads? Ask the railroads whether they make their profit on the long or the short haul. Ask them whether high rates and sparse population or dense population and low rates pay the better dividends! Compare New York Central traffic receipts and Southern Pacific on the average per mile! Now ships that are to use Panama plan pouring twenty million people into the Pacific Coast in twenty years.
Will Canada share the coming tide of benefits? Only two things can prevent her: first, lack of preparation—too much "hot air" and not enough hustle; too much after-dinner aviating in the empyrean and not enough muddy mess out on the harbor dredge with "sand hogs" and "shovel stiffs"; then, second, lack of adequate labor to prepare. After-dinner speeches don't make the dirt fly. Canada wants fewer platitudes and a great deal more of good old-fashioned hard hoeing.
CHAPTER XI
TO EUROPE BY HUDSON BAY
I
It must have become apparent to the most casual observer that transportation has been to Canada more than a system of exploitation by capital. Transportation has been to Canada an integral part of her very national life—which, perhaps, explains how with the exception of extravagance incident to a period of great prosperity her railroad systems have been founded on sound finance from bed-rock up. In spite of huge land grants—in all fifty-five million acres—and in the case of one railroad wild stock fluctuations from forty-eight to three hundred dollars—it is a question if a dollar of public money has ever been diverted from roadbed to promoters' pockets. Certainly, in the case of the strongest road financially in Canada, no director of the road has ever juggled with underground wires to unload worthless securities on widows and orphans. Railroad stocks have never been made the football of speculators. Charters in the old days were juggled through legislatures with land grants of eight and twelve thousand acres per mile; but at that time these acres were worthless; and the system of land grants has for the last ten years been discontinued. Because railroads are a necessary part of Canada's national development, state aid of late has taken the form of loans, cash grants and guarantee of bonds by provincial and federal governments. This has given Canada's Railway Commission a whip handle over rates and management, which perhaps explains why railroads in Canada have never been regarded as lawful game by the financial powers that prey. Including municipal, provincial and federal grants, stocks and bonds, Canada has spent on her railroads a billion and a half. Including capital cost and maintenance, Canada has spent on her canals $138,000,000. On steamship subsidies, Canada's yearly grants have gradually risen from a few hundred thousands to as high as two millions in some years. Nor does this cover all the national expenditure on transportation; for besides the thirty-eight millions spent on dredging and improving navigation on the St. Lawrence, twelve millions have been appropriated for improving Halifax Harbor; and only recently federal guarantee for bonds to the extent of forty-three millions was accorded one transcontinental. This road was so heavily guaranteed by provincial governments that if it had failed it would have involved four western provinces. Its plight arose from two causes—the extravagant cost of labor and material in an inflated era, and the depression in the world money markets curtailing all extension. Workmen on this road were paid three to seventeen dollars a day, who would have received a dollar and a half to four dollars ten years ago. In fact, the owners of the road themselves received those wages thirty years ago. Sections cost one hundred thousand dollars a mile which would formerly have been built for thirty thousand; and prairie grading formerly estimated at six to eight thousand dollars a mile jumped to twenty and thirty thousand dollars. In coming to the aid of the Canada Northern, the government did no more than Sir John Macdonald's government did for the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1885, and the prosperity of the Canadian Pacific Railroad has amply justified that aid.
Canada's transportation system has been a national policy from the first. Her first transcontinental she built to unify and bind confederation. Her second two transcontinentals she launched to carry commerce east and west, because the United States had built a tariff wall which prevented Canada moving her commerce north and south. Her canal system to cut the distance from the Great Lakes to the seaboard and to overcome the rapids at "the Soo," at Niagara and on the St. Lawrence—has simply resolved itself into an effort to move seaboard inland, on the principle that the farther inland the port the shorter the land haul and the lower the traffic toll. Owing to the enormous increase in the cargo capacity of lake freighters in recent years, grain ships reach Buffalo carrying three hundred thousand bushels of western wheat, and Canada's Welland Canal has worked at a handicap. Until the Canal is widened, the big cargo carriers can not pass through it, and the necessity to break bulk here is one explanation of more than half Canada's western traffic going to seaboard by way of Buffalo instead of Montreal.
For years the proposal has been under consideration to connect the Great Lakes with the St. Lawrence by way of a canal from Georgian Bay through Ottawa River. This would be a colossal undertaking; for the region up Mattawa River toward Georgian Bay is of iron rock, and to build a canal wide enough for the big cargo carriers would out-distance anything in the way of canal construction in the world. Both parties in Canada have endorsed what is known as the Georgian Bay Ship Canal; and estimates place the cost at one hundred and twenty-five millions; but traffic men of the Lakes declare if the big cargo carriers are to have cheap insurance on this route, the canal will have to be wide enough to guarantee safe passage; and the cost would be twice this estimate.