Twenty-two foreign railroads, nine operating in the east and central States, and thirteen western companies, each maintain one to six passenger and commercial offices in this country. Affairs pertaining thereto are supervised by Canadian Agents, Division, General and Travelling Agents, Contracting Representatives, Solicitors, City Canvassers and Counter Clerks. The combined staff numbers 100 men. With few exceptions, they are natives of the soil; familiar with local conditions, and are liberal dispensers of a good deal of salary, rentals, incidental expense monies and sunshine. [A]In rounding up traffic the tactics which obtain include direct solicitation with shipper, consignee and traveller; the assiduous cultivation of the man who pays the freight or buys the tickets, and canvass of stationary railway agents, whose judgment often dictates via what junctions and lines unrouted shipments, and passengers without pre-arranged itinerary, should be routed. Prompt dispatch and trains “on time” are cardinal requisites in luring trade and holding a continuance of favor. The personality and perseverance of the foreign road agent has an important bearing on results. Changeable climatic conditions divert certain commodities and influence the warm zone hunter from one channel to another. Warehouse and track facilities play a part in the scheme of convenience, and that indefinite quantity, sentiment, colors calculations, though shifty as smoke. Unsettled claims occasionally rile the temper and switch a lot of business to the lynx-eyed competitor who watches while he works. Friendly, but contending factions, lock horns for the haul of a single carload. San Francisco and Vancouver agents, acting in concert with their confreres at Winnipeg, Halifax or Hamilton, keep the wires sizzling. Perhaps, some of the “big wigs” put a finger in the pie, and to score a point, resort to every permissable ruse save, let us hope, that dishonorable weapon, the bogus telegram.
[A] Owing to exigencies of the war, and responding to a law enforced by W. G. McAdoo, Director General of Railroads, all United States railway agencies have again been withdrawn from Canada.
Necessity has slowly convinced numerous hesitating shippers and travellers that the canvass of those United States railroads, looking to Canada for business, has more behind it than a cloven hoof; that sometimes an extra string to one’s bow is a really effective precautionary measure.
The pack animal, oxen and primitive implements of the pioneer who pierced the wilderness and first scratched the surface of the last west, have steadily given place to the steel ribboned highway and thus, on “easy street” when compared with his progenitor, the modern colonizer is linking the old with the new and accomplishing, by successive stages, the development of our pregnant western heritage.
Nowadays, discriminating tourists, individually or in parties, the banker speculator, merchant prince in his own car, and commercial man having business in Europe, at the Pacific Coast or in Manitoba, more and more frequently requests that the New York or Chicago gateway should figure in their itinerary to permit enjoyment of the unsurpassed service and scenic environment of those routes which justly deserve the public’s endorsement.
Trade relations between United States and Canadian railroads systems constantly grow more intimate and wield an unmistakable influence in the strengthening of those bonds, commercial and sentimental, which make for the good of all concerned. This interchange broadens our knowledge of each other and tends to more completely harmonize the aims and aspirations of the two nations.
1. B. H. Bennett, General Agent, C. & N.W.R., Toronto, Ont.
2. E. T. Boland, Manager, Robert Reford Co., Toronto.
3. R. Creelman, General Passenger Agent, Canadian Northern Railway, Winnipeg, Man.