We had begun with two engines, fifty new freight cars, made by the Crossens, of Coburg, two second-hand passenger cars, bought from the Rathbuns, of Deseronto, and an uncertain number of flat cars, which had been used on construction. We had to buy more second-hand equipment for the eastward adventure, but, as to flat cars for the cordwood, our conductor, Percival, had a brave habit of borrowing such as he could collect, in the C.P.R. yards, without asking anybody’s leave.
The late Sir William Whyte frequently laughed with us over this manifestation of Percival’s trust in the C.P.R., which Sir William used to observe from his window in the old station overlooking the yards. The Muskeg Limited, as our train became known, had its own place in Winnipeg transportation, and its name ought not to be forgotten.
On the whole, then, it can be said that as a company of railway adventurers, we were the lineal successors of The Farmer Outfit, which Mackenzie took into the Rockies in 1884. But we had avoided some mistakes, which others, later, failed to avoid; and we had some results to show, of which it is pertinent, now to speak.
The mistake avoided was the common one of acting as if fine shows made fine roads. Mackenzie and Mann had been through a mill which was addicted to grinding exceeding small. They both came from pioneer farms. Their railroading experience began with the rough and tumble of construction camps, and frequent reliance on bannock and sowbelly. They never supposed that office furniture could offset a lack of revenue. They started pioneer roads like pioneer roads.
Though their first superintendent had tasted of the London administration of the Grand Trunk, and had filled a chair in the head office of the New York Central, he had also seen the prolonged effects of too much optimism at Portage la Prairie, had lived through three years of a branch line’s receivership, and had never forgotten the early days in Scotland, when the office equipment of a frugal management included chairs made out of barrels, and a couple of doorknobs functioning as very efficient inkwells.
From time to time one has heard the scoffer in the land and on the train—sometimes when using a pass—comparing Canadian Northern infancy with Canadian Pacific maturity and Grand Trunk Pacific magnificence. It was met silently by the reflection that cutting your coat according to your cloth is often a financially hygienic science—it was with us twenty-five years ago.
The result? I have said that the bargain with the Manitoba Government provided that we need not pay interest on the guaranteed bonds for three years. But by hewing to the pioneering line, and with men like Billy Walker, “Joe Beef” and Dad Risteen, we paid our fixed charges out of revenue from the start. The first year’s earnings were sixty thousand dollars. The staff, superintendent and all, totalled thirteen, until it was deemed expedient to touch a less ominous figure by engaging a boy.
The original office force, the father of the accounting staff of the Canadian Northern, was Cecil Friend, taken from his post as secretary to Robert Kerr, western passenger traffic manager of the C.P.R. He is a man to whom all who have ever worked with him, are devoted. When we became a transcontinental system he was moved from Winnipeg to Toronto, and is now at the Montreal headquarters. While we were colleagues he saw his jurisdiction extend from himself as sole accountant, to a staff of over four hundred people exclusively engaged in his department, and receipts grow from sixty thousand to sixty-seven million dollars a year.
If an example of the constancy with which all hands kept at the job of keeping down expenses and putting up revenues be appropriate, I may be forgiven for repeating what happened one summer day. There was an unavoidable accident, a little north of Plumas—a heifer was caught by the cow catcher, and her legs broken. The superintendent happened to be on the train, also a brakeman who had been a butcher. The heifer was useless to the farmer, except as beef, for which his claim on the company would make a low allowance. The train was halted while the brakeman-butcher killed and dressed the heifer, the passengers surrounding the operation. The carcass and hide were put in the baggage car; the carcass was sold to the contractor, whose construction camp was west of Dauphin, the hide was turned into the ordinary channels of trade; the farmer’s claim was paid in full from the receipts for meat and hide, and four dollars were carried into the treasury.