"Another Total Abstainer."
Another letter, published in the Witness of December 29th, and signed "Disinterested," is given below. The allusion to the queries of the Alliance and the replies of the Assistant General Manager will be more fully explained in the next chapter.
"To the Editor of the Witness:
"Sir,—I am usually of moderate temperament and seldom take extreme views or measures on any subject, but if I understand rightly the present state of the controversy between the Dominion Alliance and the Canadian Pacific Railway, unless the latter has a secret compact with the brewers, distillers and liquor venders of this county, to warrant their taking the present stand, they are adopting the most extraordinary course of any corporation seeking public patronage I have ever known. The following is, as I understand it, the present position of the affair:
"1. There are lawbreakers in the county of Brome.
"2. An employee of the C. P. R. aids in detecting them, and bringing them to justice.
"3. The lawbreakers hire a man to murder him, who fails to quite accomplish his task.
"4. The employee, in his hours off duty, denounces the practices of the lawbreakers, and the traffic that creates such lawbreakers and murderers.
"5. A district superintendent of the C. P. R. informs him that for so doing he is dismissed.
"6. The Dominion Alliance asks why this should be so? Is it not interfering with the liberty of the British subject? Is not slavery revived in another form for an employer to say to an employee, 'You must not express an opinion on any subject of social reform or otherwise on pain of being dismissed from my employ.'