[[3]] 'Most men who have really lived have had, in some shape, their great adventure. This railway is mine' (James J. Hill, in Valedictory to the Shareholders of the Great Northern, July 1, 1912).
[[4]] It was from their St Paul investment that the leading men in the group secured the basis and the bulk of their great fortunes; the Canadian Pacific added little to their coffers.
[[5]] Including the Yale-Port Moody section, not yet formally under contract.
[[6]] Giving evidence before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce in New York in 1889, President Van Horne stated that the company was obliged to abandon part of the surveys on which the government had spent millions, and make new ones; that the government sections were unwisely located, especially in British Columbia; that the cost of the remainder was increased by having to join it to the unwisely located sections, and that, allowing for the saving which could have been made in location, he could have duplicated the latter for twelve or fifteen millions.
[[7]] 'The payment to the government of $8,710,240, in advance, of secured dividends, has deprived the company for the moment of the means for continuous, vigorous exertion in construction, without enabling it to recoup itself by the sale of its stock, as was confidently and reasonably expected' (Letter of George Stephen to the government, January 15,1884).
Speaking in parliament in 1885, Edward Blake declared that, omitting the last ten millions issued, the company had raised on stock $24,500,000, and, counting the next two dividend payments, they would have paid or provided for dividends $24,875,000. Already $7,000,000 had been paid out in dividends, members of the syndicate receiving $3,610,000 on their $10,000,000 investment. In other words, before the road was opened for traffic, every cent paid in by the shareholders would have been paid back or set aside for dividends, leaving not a dollar for building the road.