"The men who save the world," says The Onlooker, "are those who work by rule of thumb; who do the day's work by the day's light and advance on chaos and the painful dark by inches; in other words, the practical men."
Such a motto might be Drayton's crest. He is very practical; too much so to be an interesting personality to the average man. But by his dull and diligent practicality he has done rather more than his bit in helping to re-establish Canada. He would, if he could, cut our imports from the United States in half in order to rectify exchange. Whenever he dies the Canadian $ par on exchange will be found graven upon his heart.
Drayton's tariff tour was one of the most characteristic things he ever did. In this, however, there may have been an element of politics. A travelling tariff commission taking evidence in almost every village with a smokestack from coast to coast must have had some real object. But Sir Henry had cleaned up most of the possibilities in direct taxation; it was time he tackled the tariff, even though he knew it was largely a show to satisfy the people that the most patient investigator in the world at the head of a small court had taken evidence on what every Tom and Dick had to say for and against in any part of the country outside of the Yukon. Had it been practicable to hold a session on Great Bear Lake, to determine the trade relations between the copper-kniving Eskimos and the meat-swapping Yellow Knife Indians, Sir Henry would have done it.
Such vast patience is phenomenal even in Drayton. One almost fears that he is becoming interested in a Federal election. If so, the end is in sight. The day we partyize Sir Henry we shall lose one of the oddest and rarest personal identities we ever had. But we can better afford to lose his personal identity in his party service than to lose both in putting into the Finance Department in 1922 some idealistic experimenter in the efficacy of Free Trade.
THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN RAILROADING
EDWARD WENTWORTH BEATTY, K.C.
The main thing that E. W. Beatty, K.C., did to help win the war was to become President of the C.P.R. And he did it well. A glance at this polished pony engine of a chief executive suggests that he has never done anything but well, and that he is the kind of man likely without preachments to stimulate well-doing in other people.
I first met this self-controlled master of executives not long after he became President. He was most cordial; as Shaughnessy had been austere. Under such a direct impression it seemed that I had at last found a man who would make the inexorable old C.P.R. become a golden door to humanity. Of course I was mistaken. That kind of man is born often enough, but he seldom stays with his birthright. I knew that the railway of railways was no school for the humanities; but this university graduate, Chancellor of Queen's, distinguished counsel and potential eminent judge, bachelor, Canadian born, every inch an athlete and as rugged as Carpentier, seemed to my aroused imagination one who would be as much bigger than the stodgy C.P.R. as that system was greater than others of its kind.
Beatty has not been at his new job long enough yet to prove what I suspect—that I was wrong. But he has been long enough with it to know that the surging ideals and aspirations of a young, healthy man in his own office are pretty rudely shaken down by the practical operation of a great system in a time of financial difficulty.
We talked for nearly an hour. He seemed to have the time and the interest. His big office was as quiet as a library. His desk was almost devoid of signs of labour. Not a paper to be seen that required immediate attention; every item neatly disposed; himself smoking—a fairly strong pipe; scarcely a telephone call to interrupt. He seemed the sculptor's embodiment of strength in reserve; a man who never could be tuckered or peevish or unable to detect either the weakness of an opponent, the penetration of a critic or the need of a man who came to ask him for advice. There was a big instant kindliness about him that would have won the cordiality of the stolidest of interviewers, as we talked about railways, government ownership, the needs of journalism and the value in business of the personal equation—his own phrase which he repeated so often that it seemed to contain something of prophetic intention. He paid his venerating respects to the founders of the C.P.R., but he seemed to have more enthusiasm for Lord Mountstephen than for Van Horne.